Takeshi Hidaka

The last player that retired at the end of last season that I want to do a post on is Takeshi Hidaka of the Tigers.  Hidaka was drafted out of high school in the third round of the fall 1995 draft by the Orix Blue Wave.  He didn't debut with the ichi-gun Blue Wave until 1998.  An interesting confluence of events occurred to thrust him into the starting catcher role at age 20 - after veteran backup catcher Satoshi Nakajima had left the team for Seibu as a free agent after the 1997 season, Orix's number one catcher, Takashi Miwa, was suspended for seven weeks at the beginning of the 1998 season for his involvement in a tax evasion scandal.  Hidaka would pretty much remain the number one catcher for Orix until the 2010 season.  Orix released him following the 2012 season and he played for Hanshin the last two seasons.

Hidaka made five All Star teams - 2000-2002, 2006 and 2008.  He never played in a Nippon Series despite the fact that Orix made the Series in his first professional year (1996) and Hanshin made it in his last professional year (2014).

His BBM rookie card was #498 in the 1996 set.  His first Calbee card was not until 2008(!) - #285.  He last appeared in a BBM flagship set in 2013.

Here's a sampling of his cards:

1996 BBM #498

2000 BBM All Stars #A59

2002 Konami Prime Nine #151 (Foil)

2006 BBM Buffaloes #Bs34

2009 BBM Orix 20th Anniversary #40

2013 BBM The Trade Stories #74

Shugo Fujii

Shugo Fujii announced his retirement late last November after being released by the Baystars and failing to attract the interest of any other teams.  Fujii was a star pitcher in college at Waseda and was drafted in the second round by Yakult in the fall 1999 draft (aka the 2000 draft).

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #082

2000 BBM #468

2001 was by far his best year.  After working in relief during his rookie season, he moved into the rotation in 2001 and ended up going 14-8 with a 3.17 ERA, leading the Central League in wins.  He made his first All Star team that season and played in the Nippon Series for the first time as the Swallows beat the Buffaloes four games to one.  He wrapped up the season pitching for the Japan National Team in the 2001 Baseball World Cup.

2001 BBM All Stars #A20

2001 BBM Nippon Series #S5

2002 BBM 1st Version #389

2002 BBM Japan National Team #11

 His numbers for 2002 actually look a little better than his number for 2001 although his win-loss record dropped to 10-9 as the Swallows failed to repeat.  He got injured in 2003, however, and underwent Tommy John surgery.  His first full season back in 2005 got him to the All Star team again, but it would be the last time.  Following a couple so-so seasons, he was traded to the Fighters following the 2007 season.

2002 Calbee #OP-1

2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black Edition #163

He spent two seasons with the Fighters, going 10-13.  His final appearance for the Fighters was his start in Game 5 of the 2009 Nippon Series against the Giants, throwing 7 shutout innings in a game ultimately won by the Giants in the bottom of the ninth.

2008 BBM 2nd Version #629

Following the 2009 season, Fujii became a free agent and signed with the team that had just defeated his team in the Nippon Series.

2010 BBM Rookie Edition #111

2011 BBM 1st Version #228

He switched teams one last time in 2012, heading for the Baystars as compensation for the Giants signing Shuichi Murata.  It looks like he pitched pretty effectively for them in 2012 & 2013 but he didn't make any appearances at the ichi-gun level in 2014.  He did get into 14 games with the ni-gun Baystars and it doesn't look like he pitched too badly there but the Baystars released him at the end of the season.

2013 BBM 2nd Version #667

2014 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #09

Card Of The Week January 18

Norichika Aoki, formerly of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Kansas City Royals, has a new team - the defending World Champion San Francisco Giants.  Apparently Aoki feels if he can't beat them, he should join them.

Here's a 2008 Calbee card of Aoki:

2008 Calbee #143

Tomoyuki Kubota

Pitcher Tomoyuki Kubota announced his retirement back in October.  Kubota had appeared in 11 seasons in NPB, all with the Hanshin Tigers.  He was drafted in the fifth round of the fall 2002 draft by Hanshin and began his career as a starter.  He was fairly quickly moved to the bullpen and was the team's closer in 2005 when they won the Central League.  He was the "K" part of the "JFK" bullpen for Hanshin, along with Jeff Williams and Kyuji Fujikawa.  He lost the closer role to Fujikawa during the 2006 season and moved into a middle relief role, leading the league in "Hold Points" in both 2007 and 2008.  In 2007 he set a record for most appearances in a season by making it into 90 games, exceeding the existing record by 10 games.  Injuries decimated several of his later seasons - he only made one appearance at the ichi-gun level in 2009 (a start that he only lasted 2 1/3 inning of), four appearances in 2012 and no appearances at all in 2014.

Kubota made the All Star team twice in 2007 and 2008 and he played in one Nippon Series (in 2005 - despite being on the Tigers in 2003, he did not appear in their Series against the Hawks).  He apparently was on the Team Japan roster for the 2006 WBC but he did not appear in any games (which makes me wonder if he really was on the roster).

His rookie card was #117 in the 2003 BBM 1st Version set.  He also had a draft pick card in the 2003 BBM Rookie Edition set (#28).  His first Calbee card was in the 2005 set (#141).  He has not had a card in any of BBM's flagship sets since 2011.

2003 BBM Rookie Edition #28

2003 BBM 1st Version #117

2005 BBM Nippon Series #34

2006 BBM Tigers #T086

2008 BBM 1st Version #468

2008 BBM All Stars #A05

2009 BBM 1st Version #459

2011 BBM 2nd Version #585

Yoshinori Tateyama

I've gotten way behind in my posts on the players who retired at the end of last season so I'm going to try to catch up this weekend.  First up is Yoshinori Tateyama who I can cheat a little bit on as I did a post for him a few years ago when he went to the Rangers.

Tateyama was a second round pick of the Fighters in the fall 1998 draft.  They used him as a starter for his first couple seasons before moving him to the bullpen where he spent the rest of his career (with the exception of 2007 where he made seven starts in a season interrupted by injuries).  He was mostly used in middle relief (leading the league in "Middle Relief" in 2004) although it looks like he spent part of 2003 at least as the closer (he racked up 15 saves).

He made the All Star team once (in 2000) and played in three Nippon Series - 2006, 2007 and 2009.  He left the Fighters as a free agent following the 2010 season and signed with the Rangers.  He spent the next two and a half seasons playing for both the major league team and the Rangers' Triple-A team in Round Rock, Texas.  His contract was bought by the Yankees in the middle of the 2013 season and he spent the remainder of that year and the first month of 2014 playing for the Yankees' Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre team.  After the Yankees released him, he returned to Japan and signed with Hanshin.

His rookie card was #432 in the 1999 BBM set.  He did not have a Calbee card until the 2005 Title Holders subset (#T20) and he didn't have a regular Calbee card until 2006 (#038).

1999 BBM #432

2006 BBM 1st Version #151

2009 BBM Nippon Series #S35

2010 BBM 1st Version #225

2014 BBM SCM #282 (2nd Version #707)

Jung Ho Kang of the Pittsburgh Pirates

The 2015 East Asia import class has been looking pretty lean this winter.  Chihiro Kaneko and Takeshi Toritani flirted some with the majors but both ended up rejoining their NPB teams.  The other big name rumored to be heading to the States - Kenta Maeda of the Carp - ended up not being posted.  Kwang-hyun Kim was posted by his team, the SK Wyverns of the KBO, but was unable to come to an agreement with the Padres, the team that won the bidding for his rights.

That leaves Jung-ho Kang, formerly of the Nexen Heroes, as the sole NPB/KBO player heading to North America this winter.  Kang has signed a four year deal with the Pirates which is waiting only on his physical tomorrow to become official.  I believe that Kang is the first KBO position player to come to MLB but I could be mistaken on that.  (Neither Hee Seop Choi or Shin-Soo Choo played in the KBO before signing with MLB teams.)

There are only a handful of baseball cards available for Kang and they are all from this year's Super Star baseball card sets.  According to the Trading Card Database, he had one card in Season Two and apparently four others (possibly all parallels?) in Season Three.  He does not appear in the 2010 KBO game set and everything else I'm aware of from Korea is prior to his KBO debut in 2006.  He played for Korea in the 2013 World Baseball Classic but did not make it into the Topps Tribute WBC set.

The only card I have for him is the Season Two Super Star card (#SBC02-043):

I've been trying to decide which stupid pop culture reference joke to make about him - either wonder what team is going to sign Kodos or remark about how he doesn't look anything like Michael Ansara (although Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings beat me to that one).

UPDATE - I should have expected this but there's already a guy on Ebay selling unlicensed cards of Kang.  The cards are supposedly from a company called "Turf".  Not bad looking but I don't do unlicensed.

New Items

We're in the slow time for Japanese baseball cards.  It's been a couple weeks since the last sets were released in 2014 and it'll be a few more weeks until the first sets of 2015 hit the stores.  Here's a couple upcoming sets:

- BBM is releasing their annual box set commemorating the players who retired the previous year.  I'm never sure what to call this set as it's Japanese title "Sekibetsu Kyuujin" translates to something like "Regret at Parting Ball Players".  I decided a while back just to call it "Farewell" in my database.  This year's edition features 36 cards in the base set which doesn't mean there will be 36 players in the set - I'm pretty sure each of the previous editions of this set have featured multiple cards for certain players.  I don't know for sure who's in the set but the web page lists Atsunori Inaba, Makoto Kaneko, Tomoya Satozaki and Alex Ramirez among others.  I think Ramirez will be the first gaijin to ever make this set - I don't expect to see Kevin Youkilis in it.  Each box set will contain one "special" card in addition to the base set - looks like there will either be a foil facsimile autograph card (that I assume is a parallel of a card in the base set) or an authentic autograph card.  The set will be out January 29.

- BBM's next set commemorates the other end of the career spectrum.  The annual Rookie Edition set features all the players taken in last October's NPB draft.  This year's base set contains 117 cards - 103 cards for the draftees, 2 kinda-sorta checklist cards and 12 "Then & Now" cards that pair up a draftee and a veteran or OB player.  There is a parallel foil signature version of 81 of the draftee cards - I think it's only for the players who were taken in the regular draft as opposed to the ikusei draft.  There are two insert sets - a two card "Rookie Of The Year" set including the two award winners from last season (the Marines' Ayumu Ishikawa and the Carp's Daichi Ohsera) and a 12 card "Next Generation" set featuring a top young player from each team.  There's also a variety of autograph cards available, both of the draftees and the other players featured in the set.  The set will come out in mid-February.

- Front Runner Trading Cards (aka Frontier International) is releasing their first box set for 2015 in either late January or early February.  It's called "Yomiuri Giants Game Used Bat" and features 14 cards in its base set.  The 14 cards break down as two each for seven Giants players - Shinnosuke Abe, Hisayoshi Chono, Hirokazu Ibata, Yoshiyuki Kamei, Yasuyuki Kataoka, Hayato Sakamoto and Yoshinobu Takahashi.  Each set will also contain two premium cards - there are several different types of game used bat cards as well as foil signature parallel cards available.