Card Of The Week September 6

On Friday night at Jingu Stadium, Hiroki Fukunaga of the Chunichi Dragons led off the game against the Tokyo Yakult Swallows with a home run, his seventh of the season (and third lead off one).  Last night, he repeated himself, leading off the game with a home run again.  That made him the first player in Dragons history to hit lead off home runs in consecutive games, although it's been done 38 other times in NPB (23 other times in the Central League).  (H/T NPB Reddit)

Fukunaga was the Dragons' seventh pick in the 2022 from Nippon Shinyaku of the corporate leagues.  I was a little surprised to discover that I had two cards of him from 2022 - the earliest cards for most players are from the Rookie Edition set the year AFTER they're drafted.  Two things happened to make Fukunaga have earlier cards.  The first is that he appeared in the 2022 JABA (Japanese Amateur Baseball Association) corporate league card set (with Nippon Shinyaku) and the second is that 2022 was the last year Epoch issued Epoch One cards for drafted players that were issued the same year as the draft (and the Dragons were one of the teams they featured).  

Here are the two cards in question:

2022 JABA #22JP065

2022 Epoch One #994

Card Of The Week August 30

Last Thursday saw the 2026 debut of another one of my favorite players, 46 year old Swallows pitcher Masanori Ishikawa.  To say it didn't go well would be an understatement - he started against the Giants at Jingu Stadium and gave up six runs in only 1/3 of an inning.  He faced seven batters, gave up five hits and hit a batter.  His ERA is a lofty 162.00.  And it's not like he's been pitching well on the farm this year either - he's 0-2 with a 7.63 ERA in ten games there too.

I suspect that this year will be the end of the line for him.  He was the Swallows top pick in the 2001 draft and has made at least one appearance in every season for 25 years now.  He's the last active baseball player who played in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games (when he was at Aoyama Gakuin University).  He was Central League Rookie Of The Year in 2002 and put together some good seasons in the 00's and teens.  His 188 career victories are the most for an active NPB pitcher but, unfortunately, his 194 lossses are as well - I don't think I realized he was sub .500 until I looked at his record this evening.  He's 29th on the all time career NPB victory list but ninth on the loss list.

Here's a Swallows team issued card of him from 2008:

2008 Swallows Premium Card Vol 2 #YsS04

Card Of The Week August 23

My favorite NPB player is slugger Takeya Nakamura of the Saitama Seibu Lions.  I had been tracking him as the NPB player most likely to reach 500 home runs for some time, although unfortunately it's become quite apparent now that he's probably not going to get there.  He turned 43 just over a week ago and his production has diminished quite a bit over the past few seasons.  He had 481 career home runs coming into this season and had spent much of the year on the Lions' farm team.

Friday, however, he hit his first home run of the season with the top team and it came at an excellent time.  The Lions were beating the Eagles 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth up in Sendai but Rakuten managed to score a run off of Hiroshi Kaino to tie it up.  The game remained knotted until the top of the eleventh when the Lions loaded the bases and sent Nakamura up as a pinch hitter.  He hit a grand slam, the 23rd of his career (which extended his NPB record, eight more now than Sadaharu Oh's 15), to put the Lions up 6-2.  They needed most of those runs too, as the Eagles rallied to score two runs in the bottom of the eleventh before Wataru Matsumoto closed the 6-4 victory out.  Nakamura now has hit at least one home run in every season since 2004, 23 straight seasons.

Here's a card of Nakamura from Sports Card Magazine #52, published in July of 2005:

2005 SCM #54

Card Of The Week August 16

Livan Moinelo of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks made his first start of the 2026 season last Tuesday.  The reigning 2025 Pacific League MVP had a late arrival to Japan in the spring due to the World Baseball Classic and a wide scale power outage in Cuba.  He worked out with the farm team and made an appearance with the ikusei squad against the Shikoku Island League's Ehime Mandarin Pirates but a shoulder injury further delayed his start to the season.  He went six innings against the Marines last week, giving up four hits and no runs while striking out five and walking no one, so he appears to be back to his normal self.

Moinelo had originally signed with the Hawks in May of 2017 as an ikusei player (along with Oscar Colas who defected in 2020, signed with the White Sox in 2021 and is playing in Mexico this season) and was moved to the 70 man roster a month later.  He made his ichi-gun debut on June 27th, pitching a scoreless inning against the Fighters.  He was a bullpen staple for SoftBank for his first seven seasons in Fukuoka and has been an excellent starter for them the past couple.

His first baseball card with the Hawks was from the "1st Version Update" subset of the 2017 BBM Fusion set (#602):

This is not his first baseball card, however.  Moinelo has pitched for Cuba in past three World Baseball Classics (as well as all three Premier 12 tournaments) and shared a card from the 2017 Topps Now WBC set (#W-7) with three other Cuban pitchers - Bladimir Banos, Vladimir Garcia and Miguel Lahera.  I think Moinelo is the second player from the right on the card:

There is also a Spanish-language parallel version of this card.  I'm a little disappointed that he has not appeared on any other World Baseball Classic cards.

Card Of The Week August 9

I'm on the road this weekend so instead of posting about something that happened in this past week, I thought instead I'd highlight a book I recently finished reading - "The Wax Pack - On the Open Road in Search of Baseball's Afterlife" by Brad Balukjian.  Balukjian decided to open a pack of 1986 Topps cards in the early 2010's and go talk to each player whose card was in the pack to see how their life was going now that they were no longer playing.  It's an interesting book, following his successes (Garry Templeton, Lee Mazzilli, Jaimie Cocanower, and Don Carman among others) and failures (Gary Pettis, Vince Coleman, Dwight Gooden and Carlton Fisk) at connecting with the players.  I think my only minor disappointment with the book was that only one of the players - Randy Ready - had played in Japan and it was only briefly mentioned.  

Ready signed with the Chiba Lotte Marines after a 13 year MLB career with the Brewers, Padres, Phillies, Athletics and Expos.  He ended up only playing in 30 games, hitting just .200 with one home run.  He was released relatively early in the season and played in Triple-A with the Padres affiliate in Las Vegas to finish out the year.  As far as I know, this card from the 1996 BBM set (#393) was his only NPB card:

Card Of The Week August 2

The NPB All Star games were this past week.  Game One on Tuesday in Tokyo Dome saw the Pacific League defeat the Central League 7-5.  Chusei Mannami of the Fighters was the MVP of game, getting four hits and two RBIs and finishing the game a home run short of a cycle (which I think would have only been the second cycle in All Star history after Atsuya Furuta's in 1992).  The Pacific League scored seven runs again in Game Two on Wednesday in Toyama, but lost when the Central League scored eight.  Seiya Hosokawa of the Dragons took the MVP Award after hitting two home runs in the game, including a two run one that put the CL ahead for good in the sixth inning.  

Here are cards of the two MVPs:

2019 BBM Fighters #F68

2024 BBM 1st Version #155

One other thing happened in Game Two that I wanted to highlight.  Orix Buffaloes catcher Kenya Wakatsuki stole home as part of a double steal.  He was the fourth player in history to steal home in an All Star game and the first to do it without having attempted one during the regular season.  Wakatsuki's been playing in at the top level of NPB for 12 years now and has only 13 steals over that time.  Surprisingly for a catcher, he's been success most of the times he's stolen as he's only been caught three times.

2023 Topps NPB #215

H/T to NPB Reddit for the details about both Game One and Game Two.

Card Of The Week July 26

The big news this past week is that Samurai Japan has picked their new manager - former Fukuoka Daiei Hawk and Chiba Lotte Marine Tadahito Iguchi.  Iguchi was also the manager of the Marines from 2018 to 2022 and is the first manager of the National Team to have won a World Series title - in fact, he's the first Samurai Japan manager to have ever played in MLB.  He belongs to the rather select group of just 14 players who've won a both a World Series and an Nippon Series championship.

I was a bit surprised to discover that Iguchi only suited up for the National Team once as a professional.  It was in 2001 for the IBAF Baseball World Cup.  He did, however, play for the Collegiate National Team a couple of times in 90's as well as for the National Team for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Here's a card of Iguchi from his stint managing Lotte:

2018 Calbee Series Two #M-06

Card Of The Week July 19

There were two events today that I wanted to highlight.  The Hawks defeated the Marines today 3-0 and starter Yugo Maeda got the win.  Maeda is now 7-0 on the season, the first pitcher to post such a record within three years of graduating high school since Shohei Ohtani in 2015, in case you're interested in what kind of arcane stats folks can come up with.

The other thing is that Shinnosuke Ogasawara made his first start today with his new team, the Yomiuri Giants.  Ogasawara had most recently been in the US with the Washington Nationals but the Nats released him in mid-June and the Giants signed him a few days later.  His start today was against his old NPB team, the Chunichi Dragons, and he got the win when the Giants won the game 6-1.  He thus became the first pitcher in NPB history to return from MLB and defeat the NPB team he'd left in his first game back in Japan.  (H/T NPB Reddit for both of these facts)

Here are cards for both players:

2024 Topps Stadium Club #32

2019 BBM 1st Version #272

Card Of The Week July 12

There were two events last week that I wanted to highlight.  The first one is that there was a combined no-hitter on Thursday when three Swallows pitchers - Nash Walters, Jesús Liranzo and Jose Quijada - held the Carp hitless in Hiroshima.  It was the sixth combined no-hitter in the regular season in Japanese baseball history* but the first ever in the Central League as all the others had either been in the Pacific League (or the pre-NPB Japan Baseball League) or interleague.  It was also the first all foreign pitcher combined no-no.  

* The Tatsuya Imai-Kaima Taira combined no-hitter from last year is not counted in this list as the team that was no-hit - the Hawks - scored a run which meant it was not a "no-hit, no-run" game

The game was pretty close as the Swallows were clinging to a 1-0 lead going into the bottom of the ninth and things got interesting pretty quickly when Quijada walked the lead off hitter Norihiko Nabara and the next batter, Naru Katsuda, sacrificed Nabara to second.  Sandro Fabian grounded out for the second out but Nabara advanced to third on the play.  Shogo Sakura then walked, putting the winning run on first and bringing up pinch hitter Ryosuke Kikuchi.  One of the pitches to him went a bit wild but Swallows catcher Yudai Koga blocked the ball and kept Nabara at third.  Shu Kubo, who was pinch running for Sakura, moved up to second on the play (he's actually credited with a stolen base) so a base hit by Kikuchi would likely win the game for the Carp.  Kikuchi struck out though, ending the threat and the no-hitter.

Previously in a case like this, I'd share cards of the pitchers involved but since foreign players are kind of ephemeral in NPB and all three pitchers joined NPB in since 2024, the last year I have cards for, I don't have any cards of them.  Instead, I'm sharing a card of Koga, who's blocking of the errant pitch in the ninth saved the shutout and potentially the game:

2024 BBM Swallows #S41

The other event I wanted to mention was that on Tueday, Shohei Ohtani hit the 300th home run of his MLB career.  I thought I'd share a card commemorating his first NPB home run some 13 years ago Friday:

2014 BBM Fighters #F79

Card Of The Week July 5

A day late this week due to our house losing power for 25 hours due to a major storm on Saturday night...

I had seen that the Mets had fired manager Carlos Mendoza a few weeks ago but I hadn't realized that they had replaced him with Andy Green on an interim basis.  Green had played in Japan for the Fighters in 2007 and it got me wondering how many of the current MLB managers ever played in NPB.  The answer is two - Green and Diamondbacks manager Tory Lovullo who spent 2000 with the Yakult Swallows.

In contrast, three of the current NPB managers played in MLB - Tigers manager Kyuji Fujikawa (Cubs & Rangers), Fighters manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo (Mets & Giants) and Eagles manager Masato Yoshii (Mets, Rockies, & Expos).  Three other NPB managers played in the US/Canada but not MLB - Fumiya Nishiguchi of the Lions played for the Sioux City Explorers of the independent Northern League in 1995 and both Dragons manager Kazuki Inoue and Hawks manager Hiroki Kokubo played in the Hawaiian Winter League in the 1990's*.

* I know Kokubo was with the Kauai Emeralds in 1994 but I'm not sure when Inoue was with the West Oahu CaneFires.  The Emeralds became the CaneFires when they moved to Waipahu on the island of Oahu after 1994 but I don't know which of the three remaining seasons in the league's first incarnation Inoue was with them.  It's been very frustrating that this is one of the few leagues that Baseball-Reference doesn't have any records for.

Here are NPB cards of both Green and Kokubo:

2007 BBM Fighters #F054

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #194

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):

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

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

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

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

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

Card Of The Week May 10

Last week the SSG Landers of the KBO announced the signing of another Japanese pitcher, Ginjiro Hiramoto.  Hiramoto is not being signed as an "Asian Quota" player but rather as a "short term injury replacement" for Mitch White.  

Hiramoto has had a bit of an interesting baseball career so far.  He was the ace pitcher at Koryo High School, starting (and losing) the final game in the 2017 Summer Koshien Tournament.  His battery-mate at Koryo, Shosei Nakamura, was taken in the first round of that fall's draft by the Carp but Hiramoto decided to go to college instead of going pro and spent the next four years at Hosei University.  Instead of declaring for the 2021 draft, he joined Nippon Express of the corporate leagues and spent the next four years with them.  He signed with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the independent Baseball Challenge League this past winter, apparently to increase his possibility of getting drafted by an NPB team this fall, a possibility that will be further increased if he does well in Korea.  Of course, the downside is that he'll be 27 when this fall's draft rolls around so it'll be interesting to see what kind of interest he draws.

I was a bit surprised to discover that I had a baseball card of him.  As it turned out, he has at least three cards in the JABA sets for the corporate leagues - #14 and #59 from the 2024 set and #19 from the 2025 set.  He is definitely not in the 2022 set but I've never been able to put a checklist together for the 2023 set so it's possible he's in it.  Here's the card I have:

2024 JABA #24JP059

Card Of The Week May 3

I started watching the documentary "Beyond the Game: Samurai 2026 World Baseball Classic" last week on Netflix and I noticed something a little subtle at one point.  It was during Samuri Japan's game against Korea and Seiya Suzuki had just hit his second home run of the game to put Japan up 4-3.  There's a couple shots of the dugout where, if you watch closely, you'll see someone slip in to stand next to Shohei Ohtani.  The next shot shows both Ohtani and that someone raising their right arms in unison.

That someone was Samurai Japan coach Nobuhiro Matsuda, long time Fukuoka Softbank Hawk (and brief Yomiuri Giant).  Matsuda had a post-home run routine of thrusting his right arm in the arm and yelling "Atsuo!" or "Hot Man!".  He and Ohtani were doing the same routine to celebrate Suzuki's home run.

Here's a card for Matsuda's schtick from the "Nickname Catchphrase" insert set from the 2024 BBM Professional Baseball 90th Anniversary set (#NC12):

Card Of The Week April 26

Last Tuesday was Shugo Maki of the Baystars' 28th birthday and he celebrated the same way he had two other times in his career - he hit a home run.  Maki also homered on his birthday in both 2022 and 2024.  Maki's rookie season was 2021 so he's hit home runs on half of his birthdays that he's spent in NPB.  And, to be fair, the Baystars were off on his birthday in 2025 so he's really done three of five possible times.  Given that he appears to have only been doing it in even numbered years, I'd expect him to do it again in 2028.

Here's a card of Maki from the 2021 BBM Baystars set (#DB71):

H/T NPB Reddit