Yoshikazu Kura

Long time Carp catcher Yoshikazu Kura is yet another 2016 retiree.  Kura was drafted by the Carp in the fifth round of the fall 1997 draft out of Kyoto Sangyo University.  He spent much of his career toiling for the ni-gun Carp - the only seasons he appeared with the top team for more than half the season were 2005-07 and 2012.  I think 2005 was the only season he was a regular as he appeared in 106 games that season.  The other seasons that he spent 70 or more games with the ichi-gun Carp he split the catching duties fairly evenly with Yoshiyuki Ishihara.  He was the catcher for Kenta Maeda's no-hitter in 2012.  He only appeared in one game with the top team in 2015 and his retirement game (his only appearance at ichi-gun this year) was rained out before it was an official game.  He was a player-coach this year (he was one of the battery coaches for the farm team) and he will have the coaching role next year.

Kura's rookie card is from the 1998 BBM set (#329).  He didn't have a Calbee card until 2007 (#313) and that looks like the only one he ever had.  He does appear in a number of the Konami Baseball Heroes and Bandai Owners League sets between 2005 and 2014.

1998 BBM #329

2006 Konami Baseball Heroes Old White Edition #B05W038

2006 BBM 1st Version #412

2007 BBM 1st Version #378

2010 BBM 1st Version #161

2016 BBM Carp #C36

Atsushi Okamoto

Another player who retired as of the end of the 2016 season was Saitama Seibu Lions pitcher Atsushi Okamoto.  Okamoto was a sixth round pick of the Lions in the fall 2003 draft out of Meiji University.  He didn't pitch particularly well his first season (1-1 with an ERA of 9.32 in 10 games) but the Lions put him on their post season roster that season and he made one appearance for the victorious Lions in the Nippon Series.  He spent much of his career bouncing between the ichi-gun and farm team.  His best season was probably 2011 when he went 5-1 with an ERA of 2.11 and 7 saves while working in 49 games out of the bullpen.  He only made 4 appearances this past season with the top team.

His BBM rookie card was #60 in the 2004 1st Version set (along with #12 in the 2004 Rookie Edition set).  He doesn't appear to have ever had a Calbee card although he had some cards in the Bandai Owners League and Konami Baseball Heroes sets between 2010 and 2014.

2004 BBM Rookie Edition #12

2004 BBM 1st Version #60

2004 BBM Nippon Series #11

2006 Seibu Lions "Original Player Card" #28

2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #093

2012 BBM 1st Version #061

2016 BBM Lions #L12

2016 KBO Baseball's Best Players Set Vol. 3 - Forever Ace

I received my box of the latest KBO set last weekend.  This is the third edition of the "Baseball's Best Players" set overall and the second to be published this year.  Dan Skrezyna has made the suggestion that we start calling these sets by their fully translated names so the first set (from late 2015) should be called "Hell's Fireball" and the second set (from early 2016) is called "Diamond Winners".  This set is titled "Forever Ace".

Like the two previous sets, this set has 100 cards in its base set - 10 per team.  The cards for each team are numbered separately - the Doosan Bears cards are numbered DO001 to DO010 while the Samsung Lions cards are numbered SA001 to SA010 and so on.  There are parallel versions of 30 of the cards.  All 10 cards that are number 003 have a "kira" parallel, all 10 cards that are number 002 have a "gold kira" parallel while all 10 cards that are number 001 have a "gold signature" parallel and a "clear" parallel.  This makes a total of 40 parallel cards.  And to be "clear" (so to speak), the "clear" parallels in this set are not actually the transparent plastic cards that they were in "Hells Fireball".

As in the two previous sets, the cards are intended for use in some collectible card game.  The backs of the cards are all identical to those of the previous two sets.

The box I bought had 20 packs in it.  Each pack had 8 cards - 7 base set cards and 1 parallel card.  As has been the case with the previous boxes, my box was actually short a little - I should have had 140 base cards but instead I only had 139.  I was keeping track when I opened the packs and I noticed that the pack that was short a card was also the pack that had the "clear" parallel card in it.  That might not be a coincidence since the "clear' parallel is the rarest of the parallels.

I was a little disappointed that I did not get the entire base set in the box.  I ended up short one card.  Here's the breakdown of what I got in the box:

Here's what I got:

139 base set cards (99 unique)
10 "kira" parallels (8 unique)
5 "gold kira" parallels (4 unique)
4 "gold signature" parallels (2 unique)
1 "clear card" parallel (1 unique)

Here's some examples cards:

#PA03-HA006 Seong-Hyuk Shin

#PA03-NC008 Seong-Wook Kim

#PA03-LG010 Jae-Wook Park

#PA03-LO003 Jun-Woo Jeon (Kira parallel)

#PA03-LO002 Ah-Seop Son (Gold Kira parallel)

#PA03-SK001 Gwang-Hyun Kim (Gold Signature parallel)

#PA-03-DO001 Geun-Woo Park (Clear parallel)

Dan has also done a post on this set and has also uploaded the checklist and complete base set images to the Trading Card Database.  There's also a new KBO card blog called KBO Collections that just started up in the last couple weeks run by another American in Korea named George and he recently did a post on this set (as well as the previous two) as well.

Card Of The Week November 20

The Australian Baseball League kicked off its 2016-17 season last Thursday.  As usual there are a handful of former NPB and/or KBO players in the league - Mitch Dening, Hei-Chun Lee and Loek Van Mil are with Adelaide while Gyeon-Wan Lim is with Sydney.  In addition, former Chunichi Dragon Dave Nilsson is manager of Brisbane and former Orix and Hanwha pitcher Dae-Sung Koo is the pitching coach for Sydney.

There are also a couple active NPB players in the league as well.  For the sixth year in a row, the Saitama Seibu Lions have sent a couple players to the Melbourne Aces - pitchers Shogo Noda and Keisuke Honda and outfielder Hitoto Komazuki.  Graveyard Baseball has all the details about the three players so I'll just mention that Komazuki was a 2011 draft pick while Noda and Honda were taken last fall.  If you're looking for cards for the players, they each have cards in the Rookie Edition and 1st Version sets the year after they were drafted (2012 for Komazuki and 2016 for the others) and have appeared in the Lions team sets each year they've been with Seibu (2012-16 for Komazuki and only 2016 for Honda and Noda).  Komazuki has cards in a couple of Lions box sets as well (2013 BBM Young Lions and 2013 Front Runner Lions Rookies and Young Stars).

Here's cards of the three players:

2016 BBM Lions #L27

2012 BBM Lions #L67

2016 BBM 1st Version #101

More New Stuff

A couple other upcoming releases of note:

- BBM is not doing their traditional "Historic Collection" set this year but they are still going to do an OB set.  It's called "Time Travel 1975" and as the name suggests, it's a set dedicated to 1975.  There will be 99 cards in the base set - 84 of these will be cards for players and managers from 1975.  There will be six players per team with the exception of Hankyu and Hiroshima (the two pennant winners that year) - there will be 12 cards per team for them.  There will be six cards that commemorate baseball highlights from 1975, six cards for current players who were born in 1975 (I'm guessing Hiroki Kuroda, Kazuya Fukuura, Kazuo Matsui and Koji Uehara will be four of these) and three cards for "1975 social situation".  There will be two nine card insert sets - one for Central League leaders and the other for Pacific League leaders and the usual cornucopia of autograph cards.  Epoch did a couple sets like this a few years back - one for 1977 and the other for 1987.  I'm hoping BBM's take on this theme is an improvement over those.  The set will be out in late December.

- The first 2017 set has been announced and it's another one from Sports Graphic Number.  I'm not entirely sure of the name of the set but it appears to be a set dedicated to Hiroki Kuroda's retirement.  The set has 72 cards in the base set along with 18 possible "special" cards which include autograph and memorabilia cards.  This is the third set that Sports Graphic Number has done involving Kuroda in the past year or so.  It will be released on January 21st.

- NPB on Reddit tweeted out something today about an interesting card set being released by an outfit called "Joy Box".  They've put a small vending machine in the Giants team store that dispenses cards that can be transformed into 3-D figurines of players.  Each card costs 100 yen.  There are six Giants available - Shinnosuke Abe, Hayato Sakamoto, Shuichi Murata, Tomoyuki Sugano, Yoshinobu Takahashi and Hisayoshi Chono.  Here's a video of the Murata figurine being assembled:

Satoshi Komatsu

Orix Buffalo pitcher Satoshi Komatsu is another retiring player who, like Yudai Kawai, had pretty much only one good season in their career.  Komatsu played for JR Kyushu in the industrial leagues after graduating from Kokushikan University.  He was taken by Orix in the fall 2006 College & Industrial League draft - he apparently was a "pre-signed kibouwaki player" which I'm not quite sure I understand what is.

He made 8 appearances for Orix in the 2007 season, then had a breakout season in 2008 - going 15-3 with a 2.51 ERA for the 2nd place Buffaloes.  He made the All Star team that season and was a unanimous pick for Pacific League Rookie Of The Year.  He started Game Two of the 1st Round of the Climax Series, losing to the Fighters in the game that knocked the Buffaloes out of the playoffs.  He made the Japanese team for the World Baseball Classic the following spring, pitching 2 2/3 scoreless innings while striking out five against Korea in the Pool 1 finale, a game which Japan won to be the Pool 1 top seed going into the final round.

Unfortunately for Komatsu, that was probably the high point of his career.  He went 1-9 with a 7.09 ERA in 2009 and followed that with a 5-8 record and a 4.77 ERA in 2010.  He spent most of his time after that working out of the bullpen or pitching with the farm team.  I don't think he had an injury - it just looks like he suddenly lost effectiveness.  He ended his career with a 25-26 win/loss record, which means that other than his 2008 season he went 10-23.

His BBM rookie card was #179 from the 2007 1st Version set (along with #38 from that year's Rookie Edition set) and his first Calbee card (which I don't have) is #286 from the 2008 set.  Here's some cards from his career:

2007 BBM 1st Version #179

2007 BBM Rookie Edition #38

2008 BBM All Stars #A45

2009 BBM 1st Version #435

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R094

2011 Orix BsClub #5

2016 BBM Buffaloes #Bs16

Hiroki Kuroda

Hiroki Kuroda of the Carp is another player who hung up his spikes at the end of the season - his final appearance was his start in Game Three of the Nippon Series.  His retirement ceremony was at the end of the Carp's Central League Championship parade and the Carp have announced that his number will be retired.  (There was also a bit of a panic in the day trading community in Japan over confusion between Kuroda and Bank Of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda who is NOT retiring.)

I've done a couple posts for Kuroda in the past - the first one when he left for the US after the 2007 season and the other last July when he got his 200th win - so I'll just show a handful more cards for him:

1998 BBM #76

2001 BBM #112 (Black Signature Parallel)

2004 BBM 2nd Version "Opening Game" insert #OP11

2006 BBM Carp #C005

2015 Epoch Red Helmet 40th Anniversary #05

2016 Calbee #199