Japanese Baseball Cards: Tatsuya Imai Of The Houston Astros

Last week, the Houston Astros announced that they had signed former Saitama Seibu Lions right handed pitcher Tatsuya Imai to a three year contract. Imai had been a star pitcher at Sakushin Gajuin high school, helping them win the 2016 Summer Koshien tournament - he was the starter and winning pitcher in the final game against Hokkai. He pitched in all five of Sakushin's games in that tournament, striking out 44 while only only allowing five runs in 41 innings of work.

The Lions took him with their first pick in that fall's draft. Injuries and a suspense due to underage smoking limited him to only a handful of games with the farm team for his first year and a half as a professional, but he made an auspicious debut with the top team on June 13th of 2018, starting against the Swallows and holding them to only one run in six innings. He was the first Lions pitcher to win his ichi-gun debut since Daisuke Matsuzaka in 1999. The rest of his outings that year were a mixed bag but he showed enough promise to make the starting rotation when the 2019 season opened.

His pitching continued to be a mixed bag for a couple seasons - he missed some time due to injuries and was demoted to the bullpen for a spell in 2020 - but he started to turn it around in 2021 and had three straight ten win seasons for a pretty weak Lions team in 2023-25. 2025 was his best season ever, going 10-5 with a 1.92 ERA and a league leading 178 strikeouts. He threw a combined no-hitter with Kaima Taira against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in April (it's not an official no-hitter because NPB does not acknowledge combined no-hitters or no-hitters in which the losing team scores a run) and also struck out 17 batters in a game against the Baystars in June.

TCDB lists 56 cards for Imai from his first year of 2017 but, as I've pointed out with other players, that number's somewhat inflated by parallels, autograph and memorabilia cards. He really has only nine rookie cards that are base set cards. His first card was #028 in BBM's Rookie Edition set and he also appears in BBM's Icons - Japan Pride (#10), 1st Version (#103), Lions (#L02) and Rookie Edition Premium (#RP10) sets. He also appears in the "Draft Pick" subset in Calbee's Series Two set (#D-04). His last 2017 cards are in Epoch sets - their Lions team set (#6) as well as both the Pacific League (#36) and Pacific League Premier Edition (#35). I have seven of these cards:

2017 BBM Rookie Edition #028

2017 BBM Icons - Japan Pride #10

2017 BBM 1st Version #103

2017 BBM Lions #L02

2017 Calbee Series Two #D-04

2017 Epoch Lions #6

2017 Epoch Pacific League #36

Here's a card of him from each year of his career up until 2024 (since I stopped getting NPB cards after that). This includes a card from his only appearance with Samurai Japan in a somewhat major international tournament - the 2023 Asian Professional Baseball Championship.