Japanese Baseball Cards: Eishin Soyogi

Monday, February 10, 2020

Eishin Soyogi

Former Hiroshima Toyo Carp infielder Eishin Soyogi announced his retirement back in October. You'll be forgiven if you thought he had already retired as he last played for the Carp back in 2017.

Soyogi attended Komazawa University but spent three years playing in the corporate leagues for Nissan Motor after graduating. He was drafted by his home prefecture team the Carp in the third round of the University/Corporate League portion of the 2005 draft (Soyogi is from Miyoshi-city in Hiroshima-prefecture).

He made the Carp's Opening Day lineup in 2006, the first time a Carp draftee had done so since Koji Yamamoto in 1969. He had a good rookie season as the Carp's regular shortstop, hitting .289 with 8 home runs and winning the Central League Rookie Of The Year award. The following year he changed his batting strategy in an attempt to add more power - he ended up with 18 home runs but his average dropped to .260. His numbers fell off in 2008 and he got demoted to ni-gun, losing his starting role to rookie Tetuya Kokubo. He had further issues getting playing time in 2009 when the Carp picked up Takuro Ishii as well. It didn't help that he had somehow gotten into manager Marty Brown's doghouse as well.

Kenjiro Nomura took over the managerial reigns in 2010 and Soyogi earned the starting shortstop job in camp that year with Kokubo moving to third base (and the 39 year old Ishii moving into a utility role). He had the best season of his career that year, hitting .306 with 13 home runs and leading the Central League in stolen bases with 43. He also won a Golden Glove that season.

He was limited to only 52 games in 2011 after he broke his left knee after fouling a pitch off onto it. He was back as starting shortstop in 2012 and 2013, hitting only .244 in 2012 but rebounding to .304 in 2013. He split 2014 between third base and shortstop to make room for the development of rookie Kosuke Tanaka. He had a poor season in 2015, hitting only .237 and got demoted to the farm team late in the season. He spent almost all of 2016 with the farm team, getting into only seven games with the top team and then spent the entirety of 2017 at the ni-gun level. The Carp released him after the 2017 season.

He was interested in continuing to play but as a 37 year old he didn't attract any attention from any other NPB teams or any independent teams in either Japan or the US. He eventually joined the Agekke corporate league team as a player-coach in June of 2018 (he can be seen in this promotional video for the team which also includes footage of their women's team). He was back with Agekke this past season although he also made some appearances as a color commentator on Carp broadcasts. He'll be a coach with the JFE West corporate league team this year.

Soyogi's rookie cards are all from 2006. His first BBM card was #93 in the Rookie Edition set and he also appeared in 1st Version (#431), 2nd Version (#698), Touch The Game (#141) and the Carp team set (#C051). His first Calbee card was #192 in the 2006 set. Here's a selection of his cards: