I had had a list of players that I had intended to do retirement posts for this past off season but between not having time and not having 2024 cards for them yet, I've pretty much decided against doing any more of them than I've already done. But when I heard that former Chunichi Dragons import Dayan Viciedo had signed with Tecolotes de Dos Laredos of the Mexican League last week, I figured it was a good time to do a quick post about him.
Viciedo joined the Dragons in 2016 after having played for several years for the Chicago White Sox, the team he'd signed with after defecting from Cuba in 2008. He had some very good seasons in Nagoya, with 2018 particularly standing out. He led the Central League in both batting (.348) and hits (178) that season and also had 26 home runs and 99 RBIs. He won Best 9 awards in 2018 and 2019 and Golden Glove awards in 2020 and 2021. He made the All Star team three times - 2016, 2021 and 2022. He also set a Central League record for most hits in a month with 47 in August of 2018.
His playing time started to diminish due to injuries and ineffectiveness in 2023 and he only got into 15 games with the top team last season, despite the fact that he'd been in NPB long enough that he no longer counted as a foreign player. The Dragons let him go at the end of the season.
Here's cards of him from across his nine year NPB career:
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| 2016 BBM 2nd Version #570 |
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| 2016 Epoch Record Breakers #18 |
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| 2017 Calbee Series One #072 |
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| 2018 BBM Fusion #098 |
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #288 |
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| 2020 BBM 30th Anniversary #133 |
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| 2021 Calbee Series Three #198 |
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| 2022 BBM Dragons #D53 |
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| 2023 BBM 1st Version #311 |
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| 2023 Topps NPB #6 |
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| 2024 Epoch NPB #157 |
It might've been just good timing but one of my favorite aspects of Viciedo's tenure is that it was right around the time the team was heavily investing in Cuban talent so having him around (along with apparently some folks working behind the scenes who were legends in Cuba but never got a chance to play in MLB) helped implement a pretty nice core of Cuban talent. Although after the Yariel thing the whole org seems to have moved on and pretty much all of the recognizable talent from then are now elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI remember that Omar Linares was working for them for a bit. You'd have thought the Cuban government wouldn't have wanted to have had non-defectors like Yariel Rodriquez and Raidel Martinez hanging out with a guy who defected though
DeleteI was sad to see him go, he was a rare offensive highlight in an otherwise lousy Dragons lineup for a few years there.
ReplyDeleteHis last solid season, 2022, was also my son's first as a baseball fan and I bought him a Viciedo jersey when I took him to his first game at the Dome, so he was sort of his first favorite player (though he kind of lost interest in him after he basically stopped being a regular in 2023).
I was surprised that despite him only getting into 15 games with the top team last year, I actually saw him play - he went 0-4 against the Giants at Tokyo Dome. I guess I won the "part time player" lottery because I also saw one of the desiccated remains of Hiroyki Nakajima's 15 ichi-gun appearances too.
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