Long time Carp farmhand Yuta Shirahama retired at the end of last season. Shirahama was born in Sakai but went to high school at Koryo High School in Hiroshima. He played in four consecutive Koshien Tournaments - 2002 Spring and Summer and 2003 Spring and Summer - with Koryo winning the 2003 Spring tournament. He hit 28 home runs in high school and was the first pick of the Carp in the 2003 draft.
It's not unusual for a player drafted out of high school to play exclusively on the farm team for a couple years after being drafted. What IS unusual is for a player to not make their ichi-gun debut for EIGHT years after being drafted, especially if that player was a first round pick. It's not clear to me why, but Shirahama didn't make his top team debut until October 6th, 2011.
Ultimately Shirahama only appeared in 90 ichi-gun games between 2011 and 2022, hitting just .153. The most games he got into in a season was 35 in 2012 and the only other year he got into more than seven games was 2014 when he played in 30. The Carp released him at the end of last season and he retired, taking a scorer job with the team.
It would be a fair question to ask why I decided to do a retirement post for Shirahama. The reason is that he somehow managed to have a 19 year career with the Carp despite not ever being productive. This certainly is not something that would have happened with an MLB team and it's somewhat unusual for an NPB team too.
Shirahama's list of baseball cards at TCDB is kind of interesting. After his rookie cards in the 2004 BBM Rookie Edition (#64) and 1st Version (#338) sets, almost all of his cards were in team sets from either BBM or Epoch. He never had any Calbee cards but he did appear in two Konami sets (2011 Baseball Heroes Opening Version White #B11RW125 & 2012 Baseball Heroes Black #B12RB251) and three Bandai sets (2012 Owners League 03 #OL12-131, 2013 Owners League 02 #045 and 2014 Owners League 02 #107). Here's some of his cards:
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| 2004 BBM Rookie Edition #64 |
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| 2004 BBM 1st Version #338 |
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| 2014 Bandai Owners League 02 #107 |
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| 2016 BBM Carp #C35 |
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| 2018 BBM Carp #C39 |
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| 2022 BBM Carp #C40 |
2 comments:
I liked this one "managed to have a 19 year career with the Carp despite not ever being productive." Definitely, enjoyed this one!
Thanks,
Scott
Thanks! I was trying not to be mean but this was a head scratcher.
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