If I'm counting right, six of the nine NPB players who played in MLB this season made the postseason - Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh of the Rays, Shingo Akiyama of the Reds, Masahiro Tanaka of the Yankees, Yu Darvish of the Cubs, Shun Yamaguchi of the Blue Jays and Kenta Maeda of the Twins (leaving Shohei Ohtani of the Angels and Yusei Kikuchi and Yoshihisa Hirano of the Mariners on the non-playoff teams). The teams for Akiyama, Darvish, Yamaguchi and Maeda have been eliminated although Darvish is the only player among those four to have won a Nippon Series title (2006 with Nippon-Ham). Of the two remaining players, only Tanaka has a Nippon Series championship, having helped the Eagles win in 2013 (his last pitching appearance in Japan was closing out Game 7 in the rain in Sendai).
But the possibilities don't end with the players of Japanese descent. Chris Martin of the Braves (I'll pause here for all the Coldplay jokes) won a championship with the Fighters in 2016. I don't think there's any other Western players on postseason rosters who were on a Nippon Series winning team but I could be wrong.
Here's cards of both Tanaka and Martin from their NPB championship seasons:
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| 2013 Calbee #214 |
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| 2016 BBM Fighters #F31 |
1 comment:
I definitely thought of Coldplay when I saw the Martin... but I wasn't going to throw down any jokes. I actually like some of their songs.
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