Sunday, December 22, 2024

First Sets Of 2025

The first three sets of the new year have been announced so let's do a quick overview of them...

- Ichiro Suzuki retired in 2019 but apparently missed the game enough that he founded a club baseball team called "KOBE CHIBEN".  He also passed the qualification examination to be coach high school baseball but the rules of the governing organization for high school baseball do not allow anyone working with professional teams to coach at a high school level.  Since Ichiro is still currently employed by the Mariners as some sort of "special assistant", he's apparently only allowed to do high school coaching over the winter.  I'm not clear on all the details but I think he's been primarily working with the women's team from Chiben Gakuen Wakayama High School.  There appears to be an annual game between KOBE CHIBEN and a women's high school baseball team the past four years.  The first game was played in Kobe but the last three have been played in Tokyo Dome.  The 2024 game featured not only Ichiro but also Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka on the KOBE roster.  BBM is putting out a box set for this game.  The official name is something like "High School Baseball Girls Selection VS Ichiro selection KOBE CHIBEN Baseball card set [DREAM]" but I think I'll just call it "Dream".  Each box contains 32 cards - a 30 card base set, one insert card (which is a parallel of one of the base set cards) and one "premium" insert card (which could be a foil signature, memorabilia, autographed or autographed memorabilia card - some of which feature one or more of Ichiro, Matsui and Matsuzaka).  The 30 base set cards have cards of the "three legends" and 20 members of the high school team.  The set will be out in early February.  What's interesting about this to me is that this will be Ichiro's first BBM card since 2009.  I had kind of figured that he had an exclusive deal with Epoch but maybe that ended this year.  It'll be interesting to see if he appears in any additional sets for BBM this coming year.

- "Rookie Edition", BBM's annual draft pick set, is back for its 23rd edition.  There's no real changes from the past few years.  The base set contains 135 cards - 122 cards for the 2024 draft picks, twelve "New Face" subset cards and a single "list of draft picks" card to make the number of cards in the set divisible by three.  The draft picks include both the 69 players taken in the regular phase and the 53 players taken in the ikusei (development player) phase who actually signed with their drafting team (Ryo Furukawa, the first development player pick of the Hawks, did not sign).  The twelve first round picks will again have "secret" versions which are short printed photo variations and all the regular phase draftees will have various foil signature parallels.  There are three types of insert cards - "Starting Point" (12 cards), "Close Relationship" (eight cards) and "Rookie Of The Year" (two cards featuring the 2024 Rookies Of The Year Hiromasa Funabasama and Natsuki Takeuchi).  There are autographed cards available for both the established players in the set (or at least the ones in the "Starting Point" insert set) and the draftees although I believe the draftees are only available as exchange cards.  The set will be released in late-February.

- The Eagles are continuing to collaborate with Epoch on their annual team set.  This set is usually sold in packs (or boxes of packs) at the Eagles' ballpark but also tends to be available nation-wide.  I'm assuming this set that's been announced is the 2025 Eagles 1st Version set although the web page does not say that.   The base set will contain 72 cards of active players on the roster including the development players.  It's unclear if the base set will include the 2024 draft class or not but I'd assume it will not include any players who've left the team since the end of the season (Masahiro Tanaka and Eigoro Mogi) or any players who've joined the team since then.  There are silver and gold foil signature parallels of all the base cards.  There are three types of insert cards - "Baseball Mates" (7 cards), "Keep Smiling" (17 cards) and "Uniform Collection" (22 cards) - and three types of autographed cards - "Authentic", "Record Achievers" and "2025 Rookie Autograph".  In addition, there will be memorabilia cards from game used uniforms of Takahiro Norimoto and Hideto Asamura and the ubiquitous Epoch premium GEM insert cards (both "White" and "Black").  The set will be released on March 1st.

Card Of The Week December 22

With the tragic news of Rickey Henderson's passing this past week, I got to thinking about Yutaka Fukumoto.  I was a big Lou Brock fan when I was a kid so I've kind of naturally been attracted to base stealers like Henderson (not that there's really guys like him), Willie Wilson and Tim Raines.  When I got into Japanese baseball, it was only natural that I'd gravitate towards Yutaka Fukumoto, NPB's career stolen base leader.  I thought I'd do an appreciation post for Fukumoto.

The parallels between Henderson and Fukumoto are striking.  They're the only two players in the world to have had more than 1000 stolen bases in their careers.  Fukumoto led his league in steals 13 times (1970-82) while Henderson did it 12 times.  Both players hold their leagues single season steal record as well, with Fukumoto's 106 in 1972 being the NPB record and Henderson's 130 ten years later being the MLB record.  Both players also had some pop in their bats and hold the record for most lead off home runs in their respective leagues.

Like Henderson, Fukumoto dominates the NPB career stolen base leader board.  His 1065 steals is 469 more than the runner up, Yoshinori Hirose.  Oddly enough, Henderson leads Brock by almost the same amount - 468 steals.  The nearest active player, Haruki Nishkawa, has only 342 steals.  The most by any player in the 21st Century is Norihiro Akahoshi's 381 although that total certainly would have been higher had Akashoshi not been forced to retire relatively young due to injuries.  In addition, Kazuo Matsui would have had more than 363 steals had he not spent seven years in MLB (where he amassed another 102 steals) although I feel it's unlikely he would have gotten much closer to Fukimoto's total than Hirose.

The big difference I see in their careers is the context of when they played.  Henderson was the greatest base stealer in MLB history but he wasn't the only base stealer of his era.  Wilson, Raines, Vince Coleman and later Kenny Lofton and Juan Pierre also had lots of stolen bases.  Fukumoto, on the other hand, seems to have been the only prolific base stealer of his era.  The most steals by a player whose career overlapped significantly with Fukumoto's was Yoshihiko Takahashi's 477, almost 600 behind Fukumoto's total.  

It would have been interesting to see what Fukumoto's total would have been if he'd continued playing a few more years.  He retired after Orix bought the Braves from Hankyu after the 1988 season but it really wasn't his idea.  After Hankyu's final game on October 23rd, manager Toshiharu Ueda meant to say that they'd be bidding farewall to Hisashi Yamada (who was retiring) but continuing on with Fukumoto on the new team but instead said they'd be bidding farewell to both Yamada and Fukumoto.  Although he had contemplated playing for another three years, he decided to go ahead and retire at 40.  There were no hard feelings as he coached for Ueda and Orix for a few years after that.   Given how limited his playing time was in his last couple seasons, I don't see him adding a whole lot more to his total if he'd continued playing..

Fukumoto has a lot of great cards and it was hard trying to decide on one.  Ultimately I punted and decided to show six Calbees in all:

1974-75 Calbee #484

1979 Calbee May Best #11

1980 Calbee #282

1981 Calbee #244

1983 Calbee #395

1984 Calbee #75

That 1981 card shows a scene from one of the All Star games that year.  

Rickey Henderson was aware of Fukumoto and when he passed Fukumoto's total, he signed the base and presented it to him.  That base now resides in the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame in Tokyo:


Saturday, December 21, 2024

2024 BBM Fusion

2024 BBM Fusion Set Summary

Size: 144 cards numbered 1-99, TH01-TH24, 601-620, 136
Cards Per Team:  Variable
Team Card Theme:  N/A
Number Of Leader Cards:  24
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Title Holder (24), Rookie Edition Update(1), 1st Version Update (20)
Inserts:  Ceremonial First Pitch (31), Great Record (24), Legendary Player (12), Treasure (12, /25), Esperanza (24, /50)
Memorabilia Cards: There are three different types of autographed card available - "Team Pack Version" (cards in the style of the format for the autograph cards in the player's team set), "Autograph" and "Picturesque".  There are two versions of autographed cards for the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards as well - the "silver paper" version is the more rare of the two - not all the "First Pitch Ceremony" cards have autographed versions though.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" alternate photo version.  36 regular player cards have three facsimile signature parallels - gold (/100), blue (/75) and holo (/50).  "Title Holder" cards have four parallels - "silver paper" (/200), "gold paper" (/100), "silver paper + holo PP" (/50) and "gold paper + holo PP" (/25).  "Great Record" insert cards have six facsimile signature parallels - "kiwi green" (/200), "gold" (/100), "holo blue" (/75), "holo" (/50), "red" (/25) and "royal purple" (/10).  "Legendary Player" insert cards have the same six parallels as the "Great Record" cards but they're not facsimile signatures - I think they're just the finish on the cards.  "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards have five parallels - "Holo PP" (/300), "Silver Paper" (/200), "Gold Paper" (/100), "Silver Paper + Holo PP" (/50) and "Gold Paper + Holo PP" (/25).
Notable Rookies: None 

Fusion, BBM's Frankenstein of a set that serves annually as the third installment of their flagship set as well as a "season in review" set, was the last of the four sets I received last week.  I always like this set but I always hate trying to write about it.

The base set contains 144 cards which this year are separated into four parts (usually it's only three).  There are 99 "Hall Of Records" cards which are pretty much the "regular" player cards (in as much as there are "regular" player cards in this set).  These cards contain both active and OB players and are numbered 01 to 99.  There are 24 "Title Holder" cards which are numbered TH01 to TH24.  There are 20 "1st Version Update" cards that are numbered 601 to 620 which continues the numbering from the 2nd Version set which in turn continued the numbering started in the 1st Version set.  And finally there's a one card "Rookie Edition Update" card that's numbered 136 since this year's Rookie Edition set had 135 cards.  So four different parts, four different numbering systems.  That's not confusing at all, right?

The 99 "Hall Of Records" cards serve as kind of a season summary but it's really not that straight forward.  In general, each event from 2024 that is highlighted on a card is followed in the set by another card highlighting a related event in the past.  Sometimes there are multiple cards from either 2024 or the past in the sequence.  I know this is confusing (although you'd think after nine years I'd be able to come up with a description that wasn't confusing) so let me show an example.  On June 25, Masato Morishita of the Carp threw a complete game shutout against the Swallows while throwing less than 100 pitches - what's called a "Maddux".  In addition, Morishita also had three hits while batting in the game, making him the first pitcher to have three hits in the same game in which he threw a "Maddux" since Kazuhisa Inao in 1968.  Morishita's card is card #50:

#50
Inao's card is the next one, card #51:
 
#51

If I counted correctly, there are 50 "Hall Of Records" cards that represent events from 2024.  As usual, I'm not sure what a lot of the events are (although I'd find out by looking at the cards with Google Translate) although I know that there are cards for both Shogo Togo and Daichi Ohsera's no-hitters.  I was a little disappointed that none of the games I went to last May ended up being included.  

It's kind of weird this year that some of the more prominent players in NPB aren't in the subset.  Munetaka Murakami, Hiroto Takahashi (two cards), Tetsuto Yamada and Tomoyuki Sugano are probably the biggest names.  No Kazuma Okamoto, Yuki Yanagita, Kensuke Kondoh, Yuki Okabayashi or Chusei Mannami.  (Kondoh does appear in the "Title Holder" cards.)  Roki Sasaki appears in the "Hall Of Records" cards but not for any 2024 events - Darwinzon Hernandez broke Sasaki's record for consecutive innings with a strike out to start the season so he's the "historic event" paired with Hernandez.  

Despite the lack of star power, the cards look pretty nice.  There's some good photos and several alternate uniforms are highlighted.  Here's a few of the cards:

#07

#40

#48

#58

#76

#78

Most of the 49 "historic events" in the set are represented by retired players.  I think the only players who are still active are the afore-mentioned Sasaki, Shogo Akiyama, Seiya Suzuki and Ryoji Kurabayashi (who also has a "2024 event" card).  The retired players are also a little lacking in star power with the biggest names being Sadaharu Oh, Hideki Matsui and Shigeru Sugishita.  BBM kept their streak going of having a card of a famous player with a team you don't think of him with - this year it's Kazuhiro Yamauchi with the Carp rather than the Orions or Tigers.  Here's some examples (including Yamauchi):

#06

#24

#20

#10

#61

The Title Holder cards are a throwback to the Leader subset cards BBM used to include in their flagship sets between 1991 and 2013*.  There are a total of 24 cards (numbered TH01 to TH24) that include the leader (or leaders) in twelve statistical categories for each league -  Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs, Hits, OBP, Stolen Bases, ERA, Winning Percentage, Wins, Saves, Hold Points and Strikeouts.  If a player leads the league in multiple categories then he has multiple cards in this subset - for example, Munetaka Murakami has two cards since he led the CL in home runs and OBP.  Kensuke Kondoh, Hotoka Yamakawa, Tomoyuki Sugano and Hiromi Itoh also have two cards.  If more than one player tie for the lead in a category they all appear on the card so Itoh shares his card for leading the PL in wins with Kohei Arihara.  This year there's only one other card with multiple players - Shinya Matsuyama and Takuma Kirishiki tied for the CL lead in hold points.  Here's a couple of these cards so you can see what they look like:

#TH03

#TH18

* The big difference is that the "Leader" subset used to include award winners like MVP, Rookie Of The Year and Sawamura but the cut off for Fusion's publication is the end of the regular season and the awards aren't announced until roughly two months later.

The "1st Version Update" subset features cards of 20 players who were either not included in this year's 1st Version set or the "1st Version Update" subset from the 2nd Version set or were traded since their earlier appearance.  The only player in that latter category is Gakuto Wakabayashi of the Giants, who appeared in the 2nd Version set (regular card, not "1st Version Update") as a member of the Lions (the player he was traded for, Seiya Matsubara, is not in the set).  There are a couple other players in the subset who changed teams either last off season or during the season but didn't make it into either the 1st or 2nd Version set (Shun Mizutani, Luis Perdomo and Daiju Nomura).  There's several foreign players who didn't sign with NPB teams until mid-season (Dallas Keuchel, Coco Montes and Elier Hernandez).  The bulk of the players in the subset appears to be former ikusei players who graduated to their teams' 70 man rosters this year including some veterans who were rehabbing after injuries (Haruto Takahashi, Haruto Inoue, Sho Iwasaki and Ayumu Ishikawa).  Here's a couple examples:

#611

#601

#620

Normally there are 21 "1st Version Update" cards but this year, BBM decided to add a "Rookie Edition Update" card.  With their first pick in the ikusei portion of the 2023 draft, the Swallows had taken Shosei Takahashi, a high school student from Taiwan who has dual citizenship for Taiwan and Japan (which forces him to have to go through the draft to join NPB).  Takahashi (whose registered name is actually "Shosei") wasn't able to officially join Yakult until he graduated from high school in June which prevented him from being able to appear on a baseball card until now:

#136

The "Ceremonial First Pitch" cards are short printed and not considered part of the base set but I decided to get them anyway, which increased the price I paid for the set quite a bit.  The 31 cards are numbered FP33 to FP63 in continuation of the same subset in the 2nd Version set.  If you're not familiar with this subset, it features various Japanese celebrities throwing out the first pitch at a ballgame.  As usual I don't know who many of these people are but it's always kind of entertaining researching them.  There's the usual group of Gravure Idols including two members of Nogizaka46 (Hazuki Makai and Shiori Kubo) and two members of Aozora (Yui Kudo and Eren Sugiura) and one member of NMB48 (Chihiro Kawakami) along with Yumena Yanei and Kasumi Mori who don't appear to be associated with any group (and I may be mis-categorizing).  There are several singers (and it may be extremely hair splitting about whether these could be considered Idols as well) including two members of Morning Musume (Erina Ikuta and Ayumi Ishida) along with Haruka Nagata of Green-Yellow Society, Ayaka Sasaki of Momoiro Clover Z, Gakuto Oshio (Gackt) and Hitomi Furuya (hitomi).  There were a bunch of voice actors and actresses, several of whom are also singers - Honoko Inoue, Maaya Uchida, Yuri Komagata, Arisa Komiya, Ai Furihata, Minori Suuzki, Natsumi Murakami and Toshiyuki Morikawa - along with several actors and actresses - Yuuka Suzuki, Anna Yamada, Shiori Tamada, Akane Osawa (granddaughter of the late Keiji Ohsawa, who has a couple stints managing the Fighters), and Keito Tsuna.  The subset also includes three gold medal winners from last summer's Paris Olympics and Para-Olympics - Tokito Oda (wheelchair tennis), Coco Yoshikawa (skateboarding) and Shinnosuke Oka (gymnastics).  The last two celebrities are TikToker Hina Kagel and comedian Hideharu Egashira (Egashira 2:50).  I was kind of disappointed (although not surprised) that the actors from "Abunai Deka" that I saw throw out the first pitch in Yokohama weren't in the subset.   Eight of the celebrities have appeared in earlier versions of this subset - Yuri Komagata and Hazuki Makai were both in 2023 Fusion; Yuukai Suzuki was in 2022 Fusion; Anna Yamada and Chihiro Kawakami were both in both 2022 and 2023 Fusion; Ayaka Sasaki was in 2018 Fusion and Akane Osawa was in 2007 2nd Version.  This is Shiori Kubo's fourth appearance in this subset with her previously having been in 2020 Fusion and 2021 and 2023 2nd Version.  Here are the cards of Osawa and Yoshikawa:

#FP46

#FP57

Fusion traditionally has two non-premium insert sets - "Great Record" and "Legendary Players".  I'm really only interested in the "Great Records set but I've never seen a listing that included it without the other set so I ended up getting both of them.

"Great Record" is a 24 card set that features two players from each team who achieved some milestone during the 2024 season.  Some of the milestones commemorated are Munetaka Murakami's 200th career home run, Tomoyuki Sugano's 1500th strikeout, Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh's 1000th hit and Tetsuto Yamada's 1500th hit.  Some teams didn't necessarily have two (or even one) major milestones this past season so the Buffaloes are represented by Taito Takashima's first career win and Seiya Yokoyama's first career hit.  The cards are super shiny this year which make them a little difficult to read both in person and when scanned.  There is a kind of nice, 3-D effect with them though.  Here's a couple examples:

#GR10

#GR13

The "Legendary Players" set has 12 cards - one for each team - showing OB players.  Each OB player also appeared in the "Hall Of Records" subset although not necessarily for the same team as here - for instance, Kazuhiro Yamauchi is a Daimai Orion in the subset rather than a Hiroshima Toyo Carp.  Other players in the set include Seiya Suzuki, Kazuhisa Inao, Matt Winters and Carlos Ponce.  These are also very shiny but a little more readable than the "Great Record" cards.  Here's Winter's card as an example:

#LP12

As always all the cards from the set can be seen over at Jambalaya.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

An Answer

I did a post the other day wondering if the card below featured a photo taken in Arizona:

2024 BBM Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary #130

The photo shows Michiyo Arito and Hiroyuki Yamazaki of the Lotte Orions posing in front of what looks like a palm tree in what looks like possibly an arid environment.  The two players are wearing the uniforms that the Orions wore in the first four seasons they were owned by Lotte - 1969 to 1972.  According to my research, Lotte did spring training in Casa Grande, Arizona from 1970 to 1972.  So it looked like there's a pretty good chance the photo was from Arizona.

I got a email soon afterwards from a reader named Kevin who got curious about this and started doing some research.  He found the original photo in Shukan Baseball's archives by doing a Google Lens search:


Unfortunately, the article on the web page this appears on appears to be an interview with Yamazaki from earlier this year and doesn't say where or when the photo was taken.  But Kevin found some other, similar photos including the following cover from the March 23rd, 1970 issue of Shukan Baseball:


Again, the accompanying article doesn't say anything about the photo really - it's from 2020 and talks about some of the articles inside the issue.

Kevin found a couple other photos that appear to be taken at the same location.  This first one is of Art Lopez:


Lopez spent four years with the Orions but only three when they were owned by Lotte (1969-71) which narrows down when this photo was taken - although there's no evidence it was taken at the same time as the other photos.  Same with this group shot of (clockwise from the top left) Arito, Yamazaki, Fumio Narita and Masaaki Kitaru:


The text at the top says something about Lotte winning at Tokyo Stadium but I don't necessarily think the photo was taken there.  There doesn't seem to be anything establishing the location of the photo in the other text either and it's not clear when the article is from.

Kevin mentioned that he'd been unable to establish that the Orions had done spring training in Arizona in 1970.  To the best of his research, the Orions had only been there in 1971 and 1972.  In fact, the only place saying they were there in 1970 was my blog.

I pointed out that I had seen an article in the March 23rd, 1970 issue of the Chicago Tribune entitled "Japanese Orions defeat Giants in 12 innings, 4-3" with the implications, of course, that the Tribune meant the San Francisco variety and not the Yomiuri ones.  I had a link to the article on my blog post about Japanese teams doing spring training in the US but since I found the article (2017), the Tribune has moved their archives behind a paywall at Newspapers.com and I wasn't able to see it.  But still, the Tribune article established that the Orions were in Arizona in the spring of 1970 and since a similar photo to the photo on the card was on the cover of a March, 1970 issue of Shukan Baseball, we've pretty much established that the photo was taken in Arizona.  I mean, Q.E.D, right?

Well, no, actually.  Kevin continued to be persistent in his investigation and ended up signing up for a week's free trial at Newspapers.com (which he says "is actually only 5 days to cancel and costs $75 every six months") and looked up the article in question.  He noticed something about it that I missed almost eight years ago.  See if you notice it:


I missed the dateline on the blurb from Reuters - that game was played in Tokyo!  It was the Giants who were on foreign soil, not the Orions.  San Francisco had done a tour of Japan in March of 1970, playing nine games in nine days between the 21st and 29th.  They went 3-6 and had a miserable time of it.  The details of the tour are available in Steven Treder's article on it in "Nichibei Yakyu: US Tours Of Japan 1960-2019 (Volume 2)".  I've corrected the spring training web page to reflect the correct years that Lotte was in Arizona.

So the Orions were in Japan in March of 1970 when the photo was likely taken so it's almost certainly NOT from Arizona.

Special thanks to Kevin for doing all this research!  This is great stuff and I'm really happy to get the story and history correct.  

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Tomoyuki Sugano of the Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles announced yesterday that they'd signed former Yomiuri Giants pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano to a one year contract for $13 million.  Sugano had attended Tokai University where he went 37-4 with an ERA of 0.57.  He had made it known before the 2011 NPB draft that he only wanted to sign with Yomiuri which was managed at the time by his uncle, Tatsunori Hara.  He was drafted in the first round by both the Giants and the Fighters, though, and the Fighters won the lottery for his rights.  He ultimately decided not to sign with Nippon-Ham and sat out the 2012 season.  Instead of signing with a corporate league team which would have cost him two years, he instead postposed his college graduation and stayed with Tokai.  He couldn't participate in official games but he could work out with the team to stay in shape.  He entered the 2012 draft and this time was taken only by the Giants in the first round (the Fighters having spent their first round pick on some guy named Shohei Ohtani).

He immediately was made part of the Giants starting rotation and quickly established himself as one of the best pitchers in NPB.  His record of his 12 year NPB career is 136-74 with an ERA of 2.43.  He's led the Central League in wins four times, ERA four times and strikeouts twice.  He's a three time CL MvP (including this past season), a two time Sawamura Award winner, a five time Best 9 award winner, a five time Golden Glove award winner and an eight time All Star (although that's including a year when he was selected for the team but declined to participate),   He threw a no-hitter against the Swallows in the 2018 Climax Series, the first ever no-hitter in the post-season in NPB history that was thrown by a single pitcher (NPB doesn't recognize multiple pitcher no-hitters as no-hitters so the Daisuke Yamai-Hitoki Iwase perfect game by the Dragons to clinch the 2007 Nippon Series is not an "official" no-hitter).  He's suited up for Samurai Japan twice - for the 2015 Premier 12 and the 2017 WBC.

His rookie cards kind of mirror Shohei Ohtani's as Sugano was probably the second biggest name out of the 2012 draft.  His first card was #01 in BBM's Rookie Edition set (he also had a second card in that set - #84) and he also appeared that year in 1st Version (#023), 2nd Version (three cards - #448, #662 and #CW004), Genesis (#02), Icons - Hope (#01), Giants (six cards - #G007, #G086, #G088, #G089, #G090, #G094), Rookie Edition Premium (two cards - #RP01, #RP37) and Classic (#001).  He also had cards in Calbee Series Two (#D-01) and Bandai Owners League 02 (#002).  Here's a bunch of his cards:

2013 BBM Rookie Edition #01

2013 BBM 1st Version #023

2013 Bandai Owners League #002

2013 Calbee Series Two #D-01

2013 Giants Winning Game Card #6

2014 Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends #4

2015 BBM Icons - Ace #21

2016 Calbee Series One #046

2017 Topps Museum Collection #WBCQR-TS

2018 BBM Infinity #094

2018 Epoch One #648

2019 Konami Baseball Collection #201900-R-G018-00

2020 BBM 1st Version #166

2021 BBM Giants #G06

2022 Topps NPB #58-24

2023 Epoch NPB #327

2024 Calbee Series One #018

Some comments about his cards:
  • That 2013 Giants Winning Game Card commemorates his first career victory
  • The 2018 Epoch One card commemorates his Climax Series no-hitter
  • I can not figure out why my scanner would only do a crooked scan of the 2019 Konami card
  • Sugano has a number of cards from US based manufacturers all ready.  Besides the above Museum Collection card, he also had a WBC-related card in the 2017 Bowman set.  He's also had a bunch of random Panini cards in both 2023 and 2024.
  • The Giants don't allow their players to do authentic autographed cards with the Japanese card manufacturers so the only autographed Sugano cards are from the Panini/Donruss releases the past two years.  I used to have a 2023 one but I sold it at Coletre last May for 7000 yen.