Kim Hye-seong of the Los Angeles Dodgers

Former Nexen/Kiwoom Heroes infielder Kim Hye-seong signed a three year deal with the Dodgers yesterday, a few hours before his posting was going to expire.  Kim was drafted out of high school in the first round of the 2017 KBO draft by the then-Nexen Heroes (which I think was held in August of 2016 but I'm not quite sure - I don't really know much about how the KBO draft works).  He debuted with the Heroes in June of 2017 and by 2018 was the team's regular second baseman at the age of 19.  He switched to shortstop in 2021 and won a Golden Glove award, then switched back to second the following season and won three more Golden Gloves.  He also led the KBO in steals in 2021.  He's a veteran of the Korean National Team, having played for them in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which were played in 2021), the 2022 Asian games, the 2023 World Baseball Classic and the 2023 Asian Professional Baseball Championship.

Kim's rookie card is #159 (or technically #SCCR-01/159) in the 2018 SCC KBO Collection set.  He's appeared pretty regularly in SCC's KBO sets since 2018 - TCDB lists 41 cards for him which includes parallels, autographed, jersey and patch cards.  I have eight of his cards, all base set cards from 2021 and earlier as I don't have many KBO cards since 2021:

2018 SCC KBO Colletion #SCCR-01/159

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 Red #SCCR-02R/054

2019 SCC KBO Collection #SCCR1-19/072

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 #SCCR2-19/074

2019 SCC Premium #SCCP1-19/079

2020 SCC Premium #SCCp1-20/H13

2021 SCC Golden Premium SCC-21/H13

2021 SCC Golden Premium SCC-21/H13 Team Korea

Untouchable Records

The 1995 BBM "flagship" set contained a ten card subset entitled "Untouchable Records".  These cards commemorated ten NPB records - nine career and one single season - that the publishers of the set deemed "untouchable".  I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick look at this subset now that almost 30 years have gone by since it was published and see how they've stood up.

1995 BBM #319

Yeah, OK, nobody's touched this one and it doesn't look like anyone's going to any time soon.  The active player with the most home runs, Takeya Nakamura of the Lions, is 390 home runs behind and, at age 41, isn't likely to get a whole lot closer.  Hell, the second place RETIRED player, Katsuya Nomura, is over 200 home runs behind Oh.  And, of course, anyone who might be good enough to someday beat this record will probably end up in MLB.

1995 BBM #320

This is another one that's pretty comfortable for Oh.  Nakamura is the active leader and his 1356 RBIs are less than two thirds of Oh's total.  And the same thing about the home run record applies here - anyone who could get close will probably play in MLB.

1995 BBM #321

This one ended up touchable - Motonobu Tanishige broke this record in 2015, just before retiring.  The new record is 3021.  The most by an active player is Takumi Kuriyama's 2301 but, while I don't think Kuriyama will beat it, I think this record is likely to fall again in the future.  Nomura's record stood for 35 years so it's not unreasonable to think that someone will pass Tanishige in the next 25 years.

2015 BBM 25th Anniversary #188

1995 BBM #322

I spent my entire childhood hearing how Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak was unbreakable and then Cal Ripken came along and broke it so I'm not willing to say that Kinugasa's is "untouchable".  Takashi Toritani got within 300 games of it so I think it's doable.  But it won't be any time soon.

1995 BBM #323

The active leader, Haruki Nishikawa, has 342, less than a third of Fukumoto's total.  As I pointed out recently, Fukumoto's total is almost 500 steals above the second place retired player.  This is as untouchable as it gets.

1995 BBM #324

There was a stretch where I thought it was possible that Hayato Sakamoto could take a run at this - he was the second youngest player to get to 2000 hits when he did it at the end of the 2020 season but he's slowed down quite a bit in recent years.  I think this is reachable - Ichiro would have certainly done it if he'd spent his entire career in Japan.  The big obstacle is whether anyone capable of reaching this milestone will play their entire career in NPB.

1995 BBM #325

Ichiro getting 210 hits in a season in 1994, completely obliterating the existing record of 191 by Fumio Fujimura in 1950, was probably the reason this set was added to the 1995 set.  It's kind of funny, then, that his record's been the most touchable of all of them, having been surpassed twice in the past 30 years.  Matt Murton of the Tigers was the first to set a new record with 214 hits in 2010:

2011 BBM 1st Version #339

Murton's record only lasted five years with Shogo Akiyama getting 216 hits in 2015:

2016 Calbee #T-08

Kind of wild to realize that for the six years between 2004 and 2010, Ichiro owned the single season hits record for both NPB (210 in 1994) AND MLB (262 in 2004).

1995 BBM #326

I don't think it's very likely this will ever be touched as the guy in second place, Tetsuya Yoneda, is over a thousand strikeouts behind Kaneda and the active leader, Takayuki Kishi, has less than half of the record.  It's also another case where in the highly unlikely chance that someone came along who could pitch in as many innings as Kaneda did and and strikeout as many batters, there's a pretty good chance that guy spends a good chunk of his career in MLB.

1995 BBM #327

Let's just repeat everything I just said about Kaneda's strikeouts for Kaneda's wins.  Yoneda is second on this list too and he's 50 wins behind.  The active leader - Masanori Ishikawa - has less than half of Kaneda's total.  And again - anyone who comes along and racks up enough wins to make anyone think they might challenge the record is likely to end up in MLB.

1995 BBM #328

My initial thought on this record was that it was probably reachable but, after looking at the all time list, I'm not so sure.  Kishi's the active leader and his ERA is over a run higher (3.05).  There's only two other guys in the top 40 who played in the 21st century (Toshiya Sugiuchi and Masaki Saitoh).  And once again, anyone who is capable of making a run at this record will probably end up in MLB.  Yu Darvish, for example, has an NPB career ERA of 1.99 but he's over 700 innings away from qualifying for this list.  At 1.82, Yoshinobu Yamamoto's NPB ERA is actually lower than Fujimoto's but he's over 1100 innings from qualifying.

Some News For The New Year

I've been wracking my brain, trying to come up with a clever way to come out and say something, but I think I'm just going to have to go ahead and say it.

2024 was the last year that I'll be buying baseball cards.

Actually, that's not COMPLETELY true - I'm still hoping to knock off the remaining cards in my want list.  And I'm expecting Topps to release a Topps Now team set for the Premier 12 Samurai Japan set.  But I don't intend to buy any other baseball cards - NPB, KBO, ABL or MLB - from this point on.

I've made this decision for a simple reason - it's time for my wife and I to start seriously thinking about downsizing.  My parents had lived in their house for almost 40 years when my mother passed away in the summer of 2023 at age 89.  It was a major undertaking - mostly done by my sisters and their husbands - to get the house cleared out and ready to go onto the market and move my 89 year old father into an independent living facility.  It really brought home to me that I don't want to put my kids through something like that.  I have something like 85,000 baseball cards and I'd like to have some control over where they end up.  

I should mention that I have no plans to sell anything just yet and I'd prefer not to dispose of my collection piecemeal.  So, please, I don't want to hear from anyone asking to buy my Ohtani cards and nothing else.

I do intend to continue writing the blog for now.  I'll probably write a little less frequently than I have been lately - I was on a kick to set a personal record for most posts in a year in 2024 and I made it - just barely.  I'll try to still track what new sets are being announced - I just won't be writing about them when they come out.  Frankly, with the fact that there aren't many changes in BBM's main sets from year to year lately, I was running out of new things to say about them.  And I was quite happy when I realized that this post was the last time I had to try to explain the Fusion set!

I used to collect minor league cards and paid close attention to who all the prospects in the MLB farm systems were.  When I switched to collecting Japanese cards, I stopped following the minors very closely.  I worry some that I may do the same with NPB now that I won't be collecting the cards but we'll see what happens.

It's going to be strange not getting any more cards.  I started collecting baseball cards in 1975 when I was ten years old and, with the exception of the years I was in college, I've collected ever since.  So 2024 was pretty much my 50th year collecting which makes it a nice round number to stop at.