Thursday, November 12, 2020

Jose Lopez

Jose Lopez of the Baystars reached a couple milestones a few weeks back.  On October 24th he got his 2000th career hit between MLB and NPB and a week later he got his 1000th hit in NPB.  He became only the third player ever (and first non-Japanese player) to get 1000 hits in both MLB and NPB - Ichiro and Hideki Matsui were the other two players.

Lopez originally signed with the Seattle Mariners in 2001 out of his native Venezuela.  He made his major league debut in 2004 and was a regular with the team by 2006.  He was traded to the Rockies after the 2010 season and spent the next two seasons bouncing between Colorado, the Marlins, the Indians and the White Sox.  He moved to Japan in 2013, joining the Yomiuri Giants.  He signed with the Baystars as a free agent before the 2015 season.  He's a four time All Star (once in MLB and three times in NPB), a five time Golden Glove winner and a one time Best 9 winner.  He led the Central League in hits and RBIs in 2017.  

He played for Venezuela in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and made the "All Tournament" team.  In fact, his first ever Japanese cards are from the 2009 Konami "Baseball Heroes WBC" set:

2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC #W09R244

Here's a bunch of his cards from his time in NPB:

2013 Bandai Owners League 02 #006

2014 BBM Giants #G042

2015 BBM 1st Version #284

2016 Baystars #2

2017 Calbee #049

2018 BBM Baystars #DB41

2019 Epoch NPB #343

2020 BBM 2nd Version #485

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