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.