NPB Down Under Part 3

I've got a small collection of Australian baseball cards.  I've got the set Choice did for the Australian Baseball League (ABL) in 2018/19 but most of my cards are scattered singles of Japanese players who've played Down Under.  I've written about most of these cards in a couple posts last year.

I was a little disappointed this past winter that there was no set for the entire league.  For a while it looked like the only cards for the 2019/20 season would be team sets for the Sydney Blue Sox and Brisbane Bandits, neither of which had any Japanese players.  However some months back I saw on Twitter that the Auckland Tuatara was doing a Go Fund Me campaign to make a team set for the Tuatara.  I was intrigued because the Tuatara had had a couple Japanese pitchers last season but ultimately I decided against getting a set.  Luckily about a month ago I saw that Shane, the seller on Ebay (top-flite-79) who I'd previously bought ABL cards from had broken up one of the Tuatara sets and was selling singles.  I grabbed cards of the two Japanese players for around $10 (including shipping).  It took a little over a month for the cards to get here from Australia but they showed up earlier this week.

Most of the Japanese players in the ABL are there on loan from their NPB teams but neither of the Auckland players fall into that category.

Yujo Kitagata was actually on loan from the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He got into 13 games with Auckland this past season, going 1-0 with a 2.53 ERA in 10 2/3 innings of work.  He struck out an impressive 22 batters (averaging over 2 per inning) but he also walked 22 batters.  He was originally a first round pick of the Baystars in the 2011 draft and spent three years with their farm team, never making it to the ichi-gun squad.  DeNA released him after the 2014 season and he bounced around over the next few years, spending 2015 as an ikusei player with the Hawks, 2016 and 2017 with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the Baseball Challenge League, 2017 with the Ehime Mandarin Pirates of the Shikoku Island League, 2018 back in the BC League with the Shinano Grandserows and 2019 with the Tochigi Golden Braves (also BC League).  A Dodger scout discovered him with Tochigi last year and signed him to a contract.  He spent about six weeks playing for the Dodgers Arizona Summer League team, getting into 13 games and going 0-1 with a 7.20 ERA.  He struck out 21 and walked 17 in 15 innings pitched.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card from when he was a Baystar:

2013 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #12

Kyohei Muranaka was no longer a member of any NPB team when he joined the Tuatara last season.  He also had been a first round draft pick, having been selected by the Swallows out of high school back in 2005.  He was a Swallow for 14 seasons (although he only pitched with the top team in 11 of those seasons) and ultimately went 46-55 with an ERA of 4.30 in 199 games.  The Swallows released him after the 2019 season and after he drew no interest at the 12 team tryout in November he signed a deal with Auckland.  He went 2-2 with a 2.73 ERA in nine games during the regular season and (as the back of his baseball card says) he started the Tuatara's first ever playoff game in Melbourne.  For 2020 he has joined the Ryukyu Blue Oceans, the new Okinawa-based independent team.  Here's the front and back of his Tuatara card along with a card of him from his Yakult days:

2011 Swallows Team Set #YsS06