More Calbees From Kenny

I got home from work today to discover I'd received another envelope from Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  Like the last one I got from him, this one contained several cards from the 2026 Calbee Series One set.  This time, all the cards were base cards from the set:

#008 Kota Tatsu

#014 Kotaro Kurebayashi

#023 Hiroshi Kaino

#021 Shuta Tonosaki

#T-21

#C-03

That final card is one of six checklist cards in the set.  The checklist cards for Calbee used to feature some of the best and most interesting photos in the set but for the past two years have featured images of the mascots instead.  Last year they were drawings but this year they seem to just be dull photos.  It's one of many decisions that the company has made over the past four years or so that make me scratch my head.

But despite that, I'm, as always, very grateful to Kenny for sending me the cards.  Thanks again!

Card Of The Week June 28

Interleague play wrapped up a week and a half ago and, for the first time ever, the Lions were interleague champions.  They went 14-3-1 during the three-ish weeks of interleague play for a winning percentage of .824, the highest mark in the history (that goes back to 2005 with the exception of 2020).  Seibu's Shinya Hasegawa was named interleague MVP, partly because of his getting sayonara hits in back-to-back games a few weeks ago.  

As I mentioned when I featured him two weeks ago, Hasegawa was originally an ikusei player.  He was taken by the Lions in the second round of the development player phase of the 2020 draft and wasn't added to the 70 man roster until mid-season in 2022.  Here's his "1st Version Update" card from the 2022 BBM Fusion set (#620), his first card in anyone's "flagship" set:

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been ridiculously busy the last couple weeks but I'm hoping things settle down some this week and I can get back to writing somewhat regularly.

Card Of The Week June 21

Normally this week I'd be doing a post for the Interleague MVP but I am currently on the road so I've had to prepare this post a week early.  Last Monday, the Eagles named former Chiba Lotte Marines manager Masato Yoshii as their new manager, replacing interim manager Tatsuya Shiokawa after just a week.  I thought I'd share what I believe to be Yoshii's first ever baseball card from the 1988 Takara Buffaloes set (#36):

Summer Offerings

As usual, I feel like I blinked and a month passed since the last time I did a round up of the recently announced sets.  So let's get to the new batch of announcements...

- I'm somewhat astonished but Topps is actually releasing a second 2026 NPB set while the baseball season is still happening.  Hell, the release date for this year's edition of the Stadium Club NPB set is July 10th, so it'll hit the stores before the All Star break.  Considering that the 2024 edition didn't come out until December of that year and last year's wasn't until September, this is a major development for them.  Like their flagship set, the details for the set are a little sparse but again, I'm assuming it's a 216 card set.  There are at least "Beam Team" insert cards and I assume there are a couple other insert sets but, again, they're not listed.  There will be relic cards for active NPB players and autographed cards for both active and retired NPB players as well as active Japanese MLB players.  The big new gimmick that Topps has added for this set is image variations for 24 players (which I assume means two per team).  I mock Topps' NPB sets quite a bit but I have to admit that Stadium Club NPB is pretty good (at least the 2024 edition was).

- BBM's annual cheerleader/dance squad set - "Dancing Heroine" - will be released in mid August.  The set will be around 180 cards.  As usual the set only includes members of the squads from the Giants, Tigers, Swallows, Dragons, Hawks, Fighters, Marines, Eagles and Lions and, as usual, I have no idea why the ones from the Buffaloes and Baystars are not included (the Carp don't have cheerleaders).  There a holo parallel of all the base set cards and an 18 card "Two-shot" insert set.  There are also autographs and "cheki" cards available.  

- Genesis, BBM's annual high-end set will be released in late September.  As has been standard for the entire run of the set (since 2012), the base set will contain 120 cards - ten per team which splits up as nine player cards and a team checklist.  No one really cares about the base set though as the attraction of Genesis is the autograph and memorabilia cards available in the boxes.  The different varieties are too numerous to list but there are booklets, super patches, ball autographs and multiplayer autographed memorabilia cards.  There's also a myriad of parallel versions of all the base cards and six "High-grade insert card" sets - Elite Of Nine, Game Changer, Unrivaled, Cross Forest, Combo Cross Foil Signing and Treasure.  

- The latest "Premier Edition" team set from Epoch is for the Dragons and will be released on July 11th.  The base set will contain 45 cards - 42 for active players, one for Doala, the mascot and two for coaches Takuya Asao and Nobumasa Fukuda (using photos from when they were players) - and there is, of course, a "hologram" parallel available for each of the base set cards.  The set has the usual large batch of inserts that all the "Premier Edition" sets have- three varieties of "Regular Foil Signature" ("silver", "gold" and "hologram") (18 cards each), two varieties of "Regular Decomori Signature" ("hologram" and "hologram parallel") (18 cards each), five varieties of "Time To Shine" ("A","B","C","D","E") (six cards each) and three varieties of "Decomori Signature" ("gold","green" and "hologram") (six cards each).  I think all the inserts are serially numbered.  There are also the "GEM" and "BLACK GEM" "special insert cards" (nine cards in each) that I think are much more limited.  There are seven different types of autographed cards - "Authentic" (43), "Star" (3), "Rookie" (9), "Legendary" (2) and three types of multiple player autographed cards -  "Combo" (1), "Dragons Combo" (4) and "Rookie Combo" (5).  I don't know what the difference between "Combo" and "Dragons Combo" is.  

- Epoch will be releasing their annual Pacific League Rookies box set on July 25th.  This year's edition will have 38 cards - a 35 card base set, two "special" cards that may be either foil facsimile signature parallel cards or GEM insert cards (both of which would be serially numbered) and one autograph card.  The base set is made up of all of last fall's draftees from the six Pacific League teams (regular phase of the draft only - there are no development players included).  There are three types of autographed cards available of all 35 players and the first round picks also have a "baseball" autograph.

- I missed that SCC had issued their 2026 KBO Collection set on the 20th of last month, just three weeks before their Festa set that I erroneously said was the first KBO set for 2026.  The base set (or at least the "normal" portion of it) will contain 290 cards which will include 10 cards for retired players.  The other 280 cards feature two cards for 14 players on each of the ten KBO teams - one showing the player in their home uniform and one showing them in their away uniform.  There are 112 "Alphabet" cards which each feature a player superimposed on a letter that spells the team's name.  There's two versions for each letter for each team, one showing a pitcher and one showing a batter.  So for the LG Twins, there's two cards with a player superimposed over a letter "T", two cards with a letter "W", etc.  Obviously each team has a different number of these cards although each team has at least 10 (I'm guessing they did the full name of the "KT Wiz") and the SSG Landers having 14.  There are 80 "Hologam" cards - 7 for each team plus the 10 retired players - and each "Hologram" has a parallel version available.  There are 30 "Victory Charm" cards - three from each team.  These appear to be some sort of partially transparent card.  I think there's 77 autographed cards available - 67 for active players (with either six or seven per team) and one for each of the OB players.

Card Of The Week June 14

There were two things that happened last week in NPB that I wanted to highlight.  On Wednesday, the Rakuten Eagles announced that manager Hajime Miki was stepping down and Tatsuya Shiokawa was taking his place on an interim basis.  Shiokawa had had a seven year playing career, all with the Eagles and has been a coach for the team since 2018.  It's kind of funny but by replacing Miki, who had never played for the Eagles, with Shiokawa who had, all the NPB teams are now managed by former players for that team with the exception of the Giants - who've NEVER had an "official" (non-interim) manager who didn't play for the team.  The Eagles have now had twelve managers in 22 seasons if you treat Miki's two stints as separate managers, 11 in 22 if not. Orix is the only other team to have double digits in that time period and that was partly because Akira Ohgi passed away after one season.  The Eagles had also had an odd habit of having a manager serve only one season every year ending in a "5" or "0" - Yasushi Tao in 2005, Marty Brown in 2010, Hiroki Ohkubo in 2015 and Miki in 2020 - which Miki had avoided last year but apparently for only a few more months.

The other thing that happened last week was that Shinya Hasegawa of the Lions had sayonara hits on back-to-back days, walking it off against the Carp on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was the first time a Lions player had had back-to-back walk offs since Kazuo Matsui did it in 2002.  (H/T NPB Reddit)  Hasegawa had been drafted by the Lions as a development player in 2020 and wasn't added to the 70 man roster until the following year.

Here are the Rookie Edition cards for both guys.  Shiokawa was the fifth round pick in the Eagles' initial draft class in 2004 and I don't think they'd unveiled their uniforms by the time the photos were taken for the set.  You can see that Hasegawa's uniform number has three digits due to his ikusei status.

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #32

2021 BBM Rookie Edition #031

New Acquisitions

I thought I'd do a quick post about some cards I recently picked up.  It's been about 18 months since I stopped buying new stuff but I do get a hankering every so often to get some new ones.

I put in an order with COMC in mid-April but, of course, I didn't actually receive the cards until late May.  I had decided to get serious about replacing a couple old Calbee cards that I'd picked up on my last trip to Japan two years ago but I was only able to find one of the cards.  I'd brought home this card of Shitoshi Sekimoto from the "Florida Project" subset of the 1974/75 Calbee set (#708) that someone had used a pencil to highlight Sekimoto on:

The new version looks much better:

Since I was already ordering from COMC, I figured I'd look around and see if there was anything else I wanted at a reasonable price.  I decided to pick up this card of Masato Morishita because (1) I've been a fan of Morishita since seeing him pitch for Meiji back in 2019 and (2) I wanted to have an example of the 1990 inserts from last year's Topps NPB set (#90-7):

I also picked up a couple cards from the 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic set.  I picked up the "image variant" of Masataka Yoshida's card (#91):

I already had the base version:

I also grabbed the "Captains Of The World Baseball Classic" insert card of Ha-seong Kim (#CC-14):

Moving on to some stuff I ordered from Ebay...

I'm kind of low key trying to get one of each of the autographed cards for the Samurai Japan Collegiate team that were in the 2024 Panini USA Baseball Stars & Stripes set.  This card of Ryuta Hirose got me halfway there:

Since the remaining 14 cards I need to complete the set include Misho Nishikawa, Seiya Watanabe, Rui Muneyama and Natsuki Takeuchi, I'm not expecting to ever actually finish the set.  As I've always said, I'm cheap, so I'm not willing to pay what it'd take to get those cards.  But I'll keep trying to get the low hanging fruit when I can.

The last two cards are for Rintaro Sasaki of Stanford University.  Sasaki was drafted last fall's NPB draft by the Hawks and is potentially going to get taken in next month's MLB draft.  The Hawks' rights for him expire at the end of July so he can see if any MLB teams are interested before deciding if he wants to join Softbank.  Panini has done about a gazillion cards of him (with another two gazillion parallels) so I decided to pick up a card of him from each of the past two years.  Generally I find Panini's cards kind of hideous but I was able to find two that weren't too bad.  This 2024 Onyx Vintage Extended card (#OVRISA) show him in what I think is a Trenton Thunder uniform with all the logos airbrushed/photoshopped off:

The 2025 Prizm card (#271) shows him in his Stanford uniform:

This batch of cards scratched an itch for a bit.  Ryan's still picking stuff up for me and, while I try not to take him for granted, Kenny's probably preparing another envelope of goodies for me, so I'm sure to be getting some more new stuff soon.

Card Of The Week June 7

I've had a busy last couple of days so I haven't been able to track the recent events in NPB very closely so this week I thought I'd do a topic I've wanted to look into for a while.  I've known that former Fighter and Giant (not to mention Lake Country Dockhounds, Brisbane Bandits, High Point Rockers and Oisix Niigata Albirex BC) outfielder Daikan Yoh had changed his name a couple of times during his career but I wasn't sure of how many times or when they happened.  

Yoh is Taiwanese but since he attended high school in Japan, he was subject to the NPB draft.  He was taken by both the Fighters and Hawks in the first round of the high school portion of the 2005 draft and the Fighters won the lottery for his rights (the Hawks had to settle for Yuta Arakawa).  His name in kanji at the time was 陽 仲壽 which was rendered as "Chung-Shou Yang" on his baseball cards in 2006:

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #32

From 2007 to 2009, his name was rendered on his baseball cards as "Chonso Yoh" although the kanji version of his name remained unchanged:

2008 BBM Fighters #F49

He changed his name to 陽 岱鋼 in 2010 which was rendered as "Daikan Yoh":

2014 BBM Speed & Smart #07

He's stayed with that name ever since.  So I guess that technically, he's only had two names but one of those got rendered in two different ways.  I don't pretend to know enough about why that would be or why he changed his name in the first place.  And I'll avoid the obvious "player to be named later" joke since that's been done any number of times - I think I first heard it when Harry Rasmussen changed his name to Eric in 1976.

While reading up about Yoh, I discovered that his older brother Yao-Hsun Yang had pitched for the Hawks from 2006 to 2013.  The elder brother had not gone to school in Japan and was considered a foreign player in NPB while the younger brother was a domestic player.  After being let go by the Hawks, he played briefly in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization in 2014 before joining the Lamigo Monkeys of the CPBL in 2015.  A shoulder injury ended up forcing him to give up pitching and become an outfielder.  He stayed with the Monkeys through 2021 (by which time they were owned by Rakuten) and spent 2022 with the Fubon Guardians.  He signed on with an amateur team after Fubon released him but I don't know if he's still playing for them (he's now 43 years old).

2006 BBM Hawks #H034

The brothers Yang were teammates on the Taiwanese WBC team in both 2006 and 2013.  They both appeared in the 2013 Topps Tribute WBC set (with Daikan getting yet another rendering of his name):

2013 Topps Tribute WBC #55

2013 Topps Tribute WBC #6

More Japanese Pitchers In Korea

I wanted to do a quick update on some Japanese pitchers playing in South Korea, three who I hadn't realized were there before and two that just recently signed.

Let's start with the two newcomers - or one newcomer and one returnee.  The Doosan Bears released their Asian quota player - Ichiro Tamura - last week and replaced him with Takuto Takada.  Takada was the sixth round pick of the Baystars in the 2020 draft and played for them through the 2024 season.  He signed on with the Oisix Niigata Albirex Baseball Club, one of the two independent teams in NPB's farm leagues, after being released by DeNA and has been playing for them until Doosan signed him.

2023 BBM Baystars #DB30

The other pitcher is Keisho Shirakawa, who's been playing for the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the independent Shikoku Island league since 2020.  Shirakawa is joining the KIA Tigers who released their Asian quota player, Australian infielder Jarryd Dale, a few weeks back.  Shirakawa had previously briefly played in KBO as an "injury replacement player" in separate stints with two different teams (SSG and Doosan) in 2024.  He missed the 2025 season due to Tommy John surgery.  I do not have any baseball cards for him but I suspect there are cards of him with Tokushima.

The three pitchers I hadn't realized were in Korea are playing for the Ulsen Whales, an independent team playing in the KBO Futures League, the farm league for KBO.  This is the Whales inaugural season and notable players on their roster besides the Japanese pitchers are eight year MLB veteran Ji-man Choi and Alex Hall, one of the catchers on Australia's WBC teams in 2023 and 2026.  

Jui Kobayashi was the Hawks fourth pick in the 2019 draft.  He was an infielder for his first three years with the team but switched to pitching after being released and resigned by the team as a development (ikusei) player. He signed with Niigata after being released by the Hawks for a final time after 2024 and spent 2025 with them.  I don't have any cards of him as a pitcher, only as an infielder:

2020 Epoch NPB #071

Taisei Naga has spent the past four years playing for independent league teams after graduating from Hokkaido University.  He spent 2022 and 2023 with the Bibai Black Diamonds of the Hokkaido Baseball League and 2024 and 2025 with Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the Baseball Challenge League.  I do not know if he has any baseball cards from either of those teams.

Akitake Okada was the first pick of the Carp in the 2015 draft and was a member of their V3 team which finished in first place in three straight years from 2016 to 2018.  He pitched in the Nippon Series in both 2016 against the Fighters and 2018 against the Hawks but his best season was probably 2017 when he went 12-5 and made the All Star team.  He got injured late in the 2018 season and spent almost the entire rest of his time with the Carp on their farm team.  He missed the entire 2022 season recovering from Tommy John surgery and was an ikusei player in 2024, his last year in Hiroshima.  He spent 2025 playing for Meiji Yasuda of the corporate leagues before giving professional baseball another shot with Ulsen.

2019 BBM 1st Version #166

Who Is Kippei Mikawa?

The Cubs announced that they had signed a Japanese pitcher named Kippei Mikawa this week and I have been obsessed with answering one simple question:

I had never heard of this guy before.  Here's what the article on Cubs HQ said about him: 

A former Rikkyo University pitcher, Mikawa, briefly retired from Baseball only to leave CyberAgent 3 a few months ago to pursue a dream in American Baseball. That dream has officially become a reality, as Mikawa is joining the Cubs and will await his system placement. Before his brief retirement, Mikawa was part of the Yomiuri Giants Jr. squad, which is equivalent to a Minor League affiliate in the U.S.

Hmm, I've never heard of the Giants farm team being referred to as the "Jr. squad" before, but, OK, I'll take that at face value.  But if he went from Rikkyo to the Giants, he must have been drafted, right?  But I looked through the last few years of the NPB draft and I don't see a player by that name being drafted by the Giants (or anyone else).  And I looked through the Giants rosters for the past four or five seasons as well (both 70 man and ikusei) and I didn't find him there either.  

I did some Google searching and once I found the kanji for his name (三河吉平), I started finding some information for him.  He did pitch for Rikkyo but it looks like he only appeared in three games over his four years there.  He pitched 1/3 of an inning against Keio on September 10th, 2023, facing three batters and giving up no runs.  His next outing didn't go as well - one inning against Meiji on September 30th of that year in which he gave up two runs on a hit and a walk.  It would be 13 months before he'd appear in another game and it was a disaster.  He recorded no outs against Tokyo on October 27th, 2024, facing seven batters and walking four of them, hitting one of them and giving up two base hits.  He was charged with five earned runs.  Keep in mind that Tokyo University is traditionally the doormat of the Tokyo Big Six league so read into that what you may.  (I got the stat lines from his college games here.)

Rikkyo University's web page for the "career paths for 2024 graduates" does indicate that he went to work at a company called "CyberAgent" but does not indicate that he'd be playing baseball for them - which more or less matches what the above blurb said.  

OK, so his story is more or less checking out.  Except for the thing about the Giants.  Seems a weird thing to lie about since it's relatively easy to check it out.  But then I found this web page listing all the teams he played for and it all fell into place.  He did indeed play for the "Yomiuri Giants Jr." team but it was in 2014 when he would have been 12 years old.  The "Yomiuri Giants Jr." team is apparently a youth team that I assume has some connection to the NPB club but is not in any sense "equivalent to a Minor League affiliate in the U.S.".

I'm somewhat baffled about why the Cubs signed this guy.  He hasn't pitched competitively in 18 months and he didn't pitch particularly effectively or often before that.  I mean, I wish him the best of luck and it's not my money, but he's certainly a long shot.  I would think there would be other guys playing in the corporate or indy leagues in Japan that would be more likely to pan out (although we're still talking long odds).

I can't imagine that the Cubs thought he'd actually been in the Yomiuri Giants' organization.  If they did, that's really embarrassing.

It should go without saying but I'll mention it anyway - as far as I know, Mikawa doesn't have any baseball cards.

Card Of The Week May 31

There were a couple interesting events last week, both in MLB and NPB.  On Monday night, three Astros pitchers combined to no-hit the Texas Rangers.  One of those pitchers was Tatsuya Imai, who started the game and went six innings.  Imai had also been part of a combined no-hitter last year in Japan.  I had briefly thought that Imai was the first pitcher to have taken part in a no-hitter in both NPB and MLB but I had forgotten that Shota Imanaga had thrown a complete game no-hitter in Japan and been part of a combined no-hitter in MLB.  In fact, Imanaga's combined no-no was the most recent no-hitter in MLB before the Astros' one last week.   Fun fact - the final pitcher of the night for Houston, Alimber Santa, was making his big league debut in that game.  He's the second player in history to debut in a no-hitter, after Bumpus Jones in 1892.

On Tuesday, the news broke that Shinnosuke Abe, manager of the Yomiuri Giants, was stepping down after having been arrested under suspicion of assaulting his teenaged daughter.  I'm not sure all the details have been established but apparently he intervened in an argument between his daughters and may have thrown the older one to the ground.  The daughter contacted child consultation services who then got the police involved.  The whole thing is quite serious and disturbing and it's not what I want to focus on.  With Abe stepping down, the Giants have named Hideki Hashigami as interim manager.  Hashigami had a 12 year career playing for the Swallows (1988-96) and the Fighters (1997-99) - and notably did not play for the Giants.  He's coached for numerous teams since retiring as a player.  Yomiuri is stressing the "interim" part of his job title as the team hasn't replaced a manager mid-season since 1949 and they've never had a manager who didn't play for them.  In fact, they've never had an "official" manager who ever played for another team (at least not before he managed the team).  There's a lot that will still play out in the story but I doubt Hashigami will have the job after the season ends.

Here are cards of both Imai and Hashigami:

2024 Calbee Series Two #114

1994 BBM Late Series #594

RIP Bob Horner

Bob Horner passed away yesterday at the age of 68 years old.  Horner was a star player at Arizona State in the 1970's, winning the first ever Golden Spikes award in 1978.  He was the number one overall pick in the MLB draft that year and was immediately put on the Atlanta Braves' major league roster, skipping the minor leagues entirely.  He'd hit 23 home runs in just over half a season and was named National League Rookie Of The Year.  He'd would team up with with Dale Murphy to be a deadly middle of the lineup combination for much of the next nine seasons in Atlanta, hitting 215 home runs over that time span.  And then, in 1987, Bob Horner went to play in Japan.

Horner had become a free agent following the 1986 season and wanted a contract for $2 million.  No major league team would offer him that but the Yakult Swallows did.  Horner signed and headed overseas.

A major league star at the peak of his career signing with a Japanese club was unheard of at the time (and pretty much still is).  These were the days of Japan's global economic dominance and it seemed like it was just another example of the Japanese buying up everything.  Robert Whiting used Horner's signing and experience playing in Japan as the opening chapter in his 1988 book "You Gotta Have Wa" and put the signing in context:

Japan was at the height of its economic muscle.  Japanese interests owned 54 percent of all the cash in the world's banks, 65 percent of all Manhattan real estate, and 3 percent of the entire U.S. national debt.  A staid Japanese insurance company had paid 39 million dollars for Van Gogh's painting Sunflower.

And now, in what one TV commentator had called the piece de resistance, a Japanese baseball team had outbid the American major leagues for a prime American player: James Robert Horner.

What Whiting didn't know or account for at the time was that the main reason the Swallows were able to sign Horner was that the major league owners were illegally conspiring to not sign each other's players.  Almost no free agents changed teams that winter.  What he also couldn't know was that the Japanese economy would stagnate starting in 1990.  Horner's signing by the Swallows was not a harbinger of things to come but basically a one-off due to unique circumstances - Japan's economic clout and MLB collusion.

The Swallows issued Horner uniform number 50 with the implication that he'd hit that many home runs, despite not joining the team until mid-April.  For the first few weeks, it looked like that was a possibility.  He homered in his first game and hit several more in his next games.  But inevitably the league adjusted to him and and pitchers stopped challenging him.  He finished 1987 with a .327 average, 31 home runs and 73 RBIs in 93 games.  

The Swallows offered him a three year contract for $10 million dollars but Horner had had enough of Japan after one season.  He returned to MLB and signed a one year deal with the Cardinals.  He was invited to spring training with the Orioles in 1989 but retired instead.  

Horner was one of only two Golden Spikes winners to play in NPB (with Trevor Bauer being the other) and one of only four number one overall picks to do so (along with Danny Goodwin, Floyd Bannister and Bryan Bullington).  

As far as I can tell, he only had six cards showing him with the Swallows that came out in 1987.  Five of these were in that year's Calbee set, numbers 101, 111, 121, 201 and 319.  The other was from the Play Ball set which was an unlicensed set issued in the United States, possibly to capitalize on Horner's presence on the Swallows.  He's only appeared in two OB sets since he retired - the 2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners and the 2020 Epoch OB Club Career Achievements sets.  Here are the cards I have of him:

1987 Calbee #101

1987 Calbee #111

1987 Calbee #121

1987 Play Ball #1

2013 BBM Legendary Foreigners #35

In rereading Robert Whiting's book when doing research for this post, I saw that he mentioned a commercial Horner had done for Suntory beer.  I went spelunking through YouTube and found this, although I'm not positive it's the one Whiting meant:

Japanese MLB Players With No NPB Experience

Rikuu Nishida made his MB debut with the White Sox today.  Nishida was born in Osaka, Japan but played college baseball in Oregon for Mt. Hood Community College and the University of Oregon.  He was drafted by the White Sox in 2023 and has been working his way up their farm system ever since.

I think that Nishida is the seventh Japanese baseball player to make it to MLB without having played in NPB first but I'm not positive.  Part of the uncertainty is defining what "Japanese baseball player" means.  Does it mean being born in Japan?   That would mean that someone like Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was born in Okinawa to an American serviceman father and Japanese mother, or Lee Jung-hoo, who was born in Nagoya while his father Lee Jong-beom was playing for the Dragons, would count.  I'm not sure folks like that are what most people think about when thinking about "Japanese baseball players", however, so I'm going to go with "players who could reasonably be expected to hold a Japanese passport".

The six previous players by my definition are Mac Suzuki, Michael Nakamura, Kazuhito Tadano, Junichi Tazawa, Gosuke Katoh and Lars Nootbaar.  I'm a little iffy on whether or not Nootbaar has a Japanese passport but obviously he meets the definition of "Japanese" for the purposes of the World Baseball Classic.  I suspect Nootbaar would probably not want to let anyone know he's got a Japanese passport if he ever decided to play in NPB as he would then be subject to their draft rather than being a free agent (which is why Katoh was drafted by the Fighters despite being born in California to Japanese parents).

Four of these six players eventually played in NPB with Tazawa and Nootbaar (so far) being the exceptions.  Three of those four joined the Fighters oddly enough.  Tazawa had wanted to join NPB but was pretty much blackballed after spurning the league for MLB in the late 00's.  He had made himself available for the 2020 NPB draft but wasn't taken by anyone.

Here are NPB cards of the four plus a Japanese WBC card of Nootbaar:

2003 Calbee Series One #082

2006 BBM Nippon Series #S08

2013 BBM 1st Version #171

2024 Epoch Fighters Premier Edition #29

2023 Topps Samurai Japan #10

There have been a number of Japanese baseball players who started their professional careers in North America (but didn't necessarily make it to MLB) before ending up back in Japan with NPB.  I did a post on a bunch of them some years back (which included Suzuki, Nakamura and Tadano) but I don't know if I missed anyone or if there's anyone that's come in the years since then.

Card Of The Week May 24

Taisei Irie of the Baystars tied a dubious record yesterday when he threw 60 pitches in the first inning of his start against the Swallows.  He faced ten batters and gave up six earned runs on six hits (including three doubles) and a walk.  Incredibly, he gave up all the hits (and the walk) after having gotten the first two batters of the game out.  It was the only inning he pitched and the six runs were the only runs scored in the entire game.  

The record he tied was set 29 years ago by Bob Milacki of the Kintesu Buffaloes, who gave up 10 runs int the first inning against the Seibu Lions on June 27th, 1997.  Milacki's stint with Kintetsu was fairly short-lived, going 0-2 with an ERA of 7.30 in six games (including five starts).  Irie was the Baystars first pick in the 2020 draft so I suspect he'll be given a longer rope than Milacki was.

Here are cards of the two players:

2021 BBM 1st Version #265

1997 BBM #166

RIP Rick Krueger

I wanted to do a quick post on the passing of Rick Krueger, the former pitcher who was somewhat briefly a member of the Yomiuri Giants in 1979.  Krueger had signed with the Boston Red Sox in 1971 out of Michigan State University (I'm not entirely sure why he wasn't subject to the draft) and spent seven seasons (one of which he missed due to injury) in their organization, including 11 games in the majors between 1975 and 1977.  He was traded to Cleveland for Frank Duffy just before the 1978 season started and split that season between Triple-A Portland and the big league team.  

He joined the Giants in the spring of 1979 with the expectation that he'd be replacing Shigeru Kobayashi in the rotation - Kobayashi had just been dealt to the Tigers as part of the resolution of the "Egawa affair".  However, he made just one start before the team was concerned about his stamina and moved him to the bullpen.  He ultimately got into just 18 games, going 2-1 with an ERA of 4.66.  He was sent home by the team in mid-September and hung up his spikes after playing that winter in Puerto Rico (despite getting a spring training invite from Cleveland for 1980).  He would later coach at Cornerstone College and ran a baseball school.  He was 77 when he passed away on May 7th.

I wouldn't have thought that Krueger had many Japanese baseball cards but he had a couple more than I expected.  He didn't appear in any of Calbee's sets for 1979 but he did show up in that year's Takara Giants set.  He was also in a card set given away in Gekkan Giants magazine as uncut sheets of six cards.  The most common Japanese card of him, however, is from the 1979 TCMA set.  I have the TCMA and magazine cards:

1979-80 Gekkan Giants #19 

1979 TCMA #58

 I used his SABR biography as a source for this post.

Cards From Kenny

I received yet another envelope in the mail today from Kenny (Zippy Zappy) in Japan.  As he promised me a few weeks ago, this one contained some cards from the lastest Calbee set, 2026 Series One.  There were two base set cards and two insert cards.  Curiously, three of the four cards featured members of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows:

#007

#059

#L-4

#S-23

Now that I have some 2026 Calbees in hand, I see that my initial impression that this year's cards looked identical to last year's was pretty much correct.  (Sean has mentioned to me in an email that the only difference between this year's cards and last year's that he's seen is "a slightly different font size for the player name on the back".)  I really wish I had some insight in to why Calbee decided to stop making any sort of effort since at least 2023.

Regardless of Calbee's shortcomings, however, I'm grateful as always to receive the cards.  Thanks once again, Kenny!

Card Of The Week May 17

There was a trade last week in NPB.  Mid-season trades are nowhere near as common in Japan as they are in MLB but they do happen.  This was a bit unusual, though, as the Baystars shipped their starting catcher, Yudai Yamamoto, off to the Hawks in exchange for a couple of their former number one draft picks - Tomoya Inoue (first pick in the 2020 draft) and Shuto Ogata (first pick in the 2017 ikusei draft).  Here are cards for all three players:

2024 Topps NPB #37

2021 BBM Hawks #H50

2023 Hawks Volume 3 #23SBH329