2020 Epoch Lions Rookies & Stars set

Epoch's first "Rookies & Stars" team set for 2020 was for the Saitama Seibu Lions and it came out a couple weeks ago.  The base set for the set contained only 36 cards, just a tad more than half the size of last year's 68 card set.  The reason for the contraction in size is that last year's set was a "comprehensive" team set in that it included cards for all the players on the Lions' 70 man roster.  This set only has cards for 34 players plus manager Hatsuhiko Tsuji and farm team manager Kazuo Matsui.

The set contains all the big name players for the Lions that you'd expect to see - Tomoya Mori, Takeya Nakamura, Hotoka Yamakawa, Takumi Kuriyama, Sosuke Genda and Shuto Tonosaki.  All the 2019 draft picks are also included (of course).  I thought it was interesting to compare the 36 people in this set with the 27 Lions that BBM included in their 1st Version base set.  Surprisingly BBM actually had two players that this set doesn't have - Reed Garrett and Fumikazu Kimura.  If you do the math that mean that this set has 11 Lions not in BBM's 1st Version set - Keisuke Honda, Ernesto Mejia, Ryusei Satoh (who is in BBM's "New Age Stars" insert set), Shohei Suzuki, Kaima Taira, Wataru Takagi, Aito Takeda, Tetsuya Utsumi, Haruka Yamada, Kakeru Yamamnobe and the afore-mentioned Kazuo Matsui.

I've been encouraged this year that both Calbee and BBM have appeared to have improved their photo selection process this year and gotten away from the same boring poses.  Sadly, Epoch apparently has not gotten the memo.  Almost all the cards in this set fall into the "batters batting, pitchers pitching" category.  There's basically one photo of a base runner (Ryota Kawano) and one photo of someone fielding (Yamada).  Here's some examples:

#08

#27

#32

#29

#02

One other exception is for Daisuke Matsuzaka.  For some reason Epoch thought it would be best to use a photo from his press conference when he rejoined the Lions:

#07

Here's what the card backs look like:

#21 (Hotaka Yamakawa)

The cards feel like they're from a thicker stock than normal so they have a nice heft to them.  I can't say I'm all that impressed with the set as a whole though. 

If you want to look at the entire set (along with inserts and parallels), take a look over at Jambalaya (as usual).

2020 BBM 1st Version Set

2020 BBM 1st Version Set Summary

Size: 372 cards numbered 1-336, CB01-CB36
Cards Per Team:  28 (team card, manager + 26 players)
Team Card Theme:  Spring Training
Number Of Leader Cards:  N/A
Checklists:  None
Subsets:  Cross Blossom (36)
Inserts:  Japonism (12), New Age Stars (12), 3D Cross Blossom (12, #'d to 25), Cross Foil Signing (12, #'d to 15)
Memorabilia Cards: Jersey cards for Rei Takahashi and Munetaka Murakami.  Each jersey card is serially numbered to 200 plus a parallel patch version numbered to 30.  There is also a combination jersey card numbered to 10 with a parallel patch version numbered to 5.  There are four different types of autographed card available - "Cross Signature" (which includes a couple cards with multiple autographs - one with Roki Sasaki and Yasunobu Okugawa and the other with Keito Mori and Takaya Ishikawa), "Special Signature", "Japonism" and "Buyback Autographs".  The last features "buyback" BBM cards for four players - Takumi Kuriyama, Yuki Yanagita, Katsuya Kakunaka and Shuhei Takahashi.
Parallels:  12 regular player cards have a "secret" alternate photo version.  Another 12 have a "ultra secret" alternate photo version.  108 regular players cards (9 per team) have facsimile autograph parallels - silver, gold (#'d to 100), holograph (#'d to 50), and red (#'d to 25) - this includes the "secret" versions of the cards as well.  (I think the 1st round picks for each team are included in the 108 players.)  74 of the rookie cards have three numbered parallel versions - "Foilboard" (numbered to 200), "Holo Foil" (numbered to 100) and "Foil Stamp" (numbered to 50).  The "Cross Blossom" cards have two parallel versions - "Foilboard" (numbered to 100) and  "1 of 1".  There is a parallel version for the "New Age Stars" (#'d to 100) and two parallel versions for the "Japonism" inserts - one is numbered to 100 and the other is "1 of 1". 
Notable Rookies: Roki Sasaki, Yasunobu Okugawa, Keito Mori

BBM published their annual 1st Version set about a month ago.  This is their flagship set and their biggest set of the year.  For the sixth consecutive year it has a base set of 372 cards - 324 "regular" cards for the players and managers (27 per team), 12 team checklist cards and 36 cross set subset cards (more about those later).

If you've read my posts on this set over the last few years then you know that I generally have two complaints about this set.  The first is that the photo selection is terrible and the second is that the set is too small.  I'm happy to report that this year I only have one of those complaints because the photo selection is actually very good.

My photo selection complaint has basically been that there are WAY too many photos of "pitchers pitching, batters batting and catcher catching".  To be fair, it's not just BBM that's had this problem - Calbee and Epoch have been guilty of it as well.  But for this set BBM appears to have gone back to having much more interesting photos.  There are photos of players fielding, base running, getting congratulations from team mates and even just standing around.  There are still "pitchers pitching, batters batting and catchers catching" photos but they don't seem to be as dominant as before.  Here's some example cards - it was a struggle to just pick seven:

#285

#097

#311

#223

#263

#193

#184

In fact there was one player's card in particular that let me know that things had changed:

#049

You may not think that it's that interesting of a photo but compared to what Despaigne's cards have looked like over the past six years, it's a significant change.

And here's what the card backs look like - basically like every other recent BBM 1st Version set's card back:

#011 (Tomoya Mori)

I do still have my second complaint - the set's not big enough.  The problem is that there are only 26 players per team in the set and all the newly drafted non-ikusei players are included in that 26.  So for a team like the Lions who picked eight players in last fall's draft, there's only 18 cards for established players.  As a result, guys like Ernesto Mejia get shut out of the set.  I'd really like to see them go back to 35 per team but it's been 10 years since they've had that many (although Epoch's NPB set has had that many the past two seasons). 

The team checklist theme for the fifth year in a row is basically "Scenes From Early Training Camp".  None of the photos really stand out but I still like these more than the ubiquitous mascot cards:

#329

BBM has been doing a cross-set subset in at least their 1st and 2nd Versions sets in nine of the last eleven years.  This year's theme is "Cross Blossom" and features 36 players (3 from each team) super imposed over a background of cherry trees and blossoms:

#CB16

The backs of the cards show the original photo:

I haven't been a huge fan of these but I must say that this year's cards are much more attractive than some of the earlier "Cross Whatever" cards.  They at least have a very Japanese feel to them.

I expect that the 2nd Version set when it is published in August will feature another 36 "Cross Blossom" cards.

The set I picked up included the "New Age Star" insert set.  This 12 card set includes one young player from each team, including six rookies.  What's kind of interesting about this set (and helps prove my earlier point about the set being too small) is that five players in the set don't have cards in the 1st Version base set - Ryusei Satoh of the Lions, Yoshiaki Watanabe of the Eagles, Ryo Ohta of the Buffaloes, Kota Yamashita of the Giants and Yukiya Itoh of the Baystars.  Odd that BBM thought they were significant enough players to include in an insert set but not significant enough to be in the regular set.

#NS03

As always you can see all the cards (including insets, parallels and "secret" versions) over at Jambalaya.  Ryan wrote a post about this set last weekend and I got much of my information about inserts and parallels from it.

RIP Matt Keough

Former Hanshin Tigers pitcher Matt Keough passed away on Friday at age 64.  Keough had spent parts of nine seasons in the major leagues with the A's, the Yankees, the Cardinals, the Cubs and the Astros before heading to Kansai for the 1987 season.  He was the Tigers Opening Day starter his first season, the first time ever that a foreign starting pitcher made his NPB debut on Opening Day (he ended up losing to the Swallows).  His best season was probably 1989, when he went 15-9 with a 3.72 ERA (although he had a lower ERA - 2.76 - in 1988 with a 12-12 record).  He spent four seasons with Hanshin before attempting an MLB comeback with the Angels in 1991.  He worked for the Angels, Athletics and Rays after retiring as a player in the early 1990's.

Keough came from a baseball family.  His father Marty had an 11 year big league career with the Red Sox, Indians, Senators, Reds, Braves and Cubs and his uncle Joe spent 6 years in the majors with the A's, the Royals and the White Sox.  Marty also spent 1968 in Japan with Nankai.  Matt's son Shane spent a couple seasons in Oakland's organization the aughts.

It's kind of odd but Keough doesn't appear to have had any Japanese cards issued in 1987, his first season.  The only 1987 card showing him as a member of the Hanshin Tigers is from the Play Ball set which was made by a US card maker.  He had Takara and Calbee cards in 1988, 1989 and 1990 and also appeared in the 1989 Lotte set.  As far as I can tell, the only OB set he appears in is the 2013 BBM Tigers Legends set.  Here's some of his cards:

1987 Play Ball #15

1988 Takara Tigers #4

1989 Lotte #111

1990 Calbee #41

2013 BBM Tigers Legends #23

Card Of The Week May 3

I bought a very large lot of 1995 BBM cards from a seller on Ebay recently and the cards arrived early last week.  Between them and my 2020 1st Version set which arrived on Wednesday I've been somewhat buried under cards for a couple days which is why I haven't been posting.  Hopefully I can pick up the pace again now that everything's sorted and put away. 

My want list for the 1995 BBM set has dropped from 300-ish cards to 100-ish.  I think I only need about 170 total BBM flagship cards to have a full run of all BBM flagship sets from 1991 to the present.

I came across something odd while I was sorting the 1995 lot.  130 of the cards that year had gold signature parallel versions - this was the first set that BBM did a parallel issue for.  What I discovered is that the parallel version of Marines pitcher Yasuyuki Kawamoto's card (#217) had a different photo than the regular version:

I think that's still Kawamoto on the parallel card as Kawamoto had worn uniform number 46 prior to 1994. 

I had put together a list of known variants in BBM's flagship sets a few years back based on the SCM checklists but this isn't one of the ones from that list.  I don't know the full story here but I'd hazard a guess that the photo from the parallel card is considered an error since the uniform number was out of date and the photo from the regular card is considered the corrected version.  What's odd is that all the Marines cards were replaced at some point in the printing process and replaced with "Late Series" cards showing the players in their new uniforms the Marines introduced that year.  So the availability of the corrected card was shorter than normal.

Run The Series - BBM Premium Malts

The Suntory Brewery has sponsored an old timers game called the "Dream Match" almost every year since 1995.  This year's game was supposed to have taken place last Monday but obviously was cancelled due to the on-going pandemic.  BBM issued box sets commemorating three of the games - 2009, 2010 and 2012 (there was no game in 2011 - I suspect this was due to the Tohoku Earthquake).  I thought I'd due a post that was a round up of this series of sets - partly because Dan sent me the 2012 set a month or so ago.

The 2009 base set contained 51 cards, the 2010 set contained 54 cards and the 2012 set had 49 cards.  Each card represented one player from the game as there were no subsets.  As is standard for BBM, each box included a bonus autograph or memorabilia card and as is standard for me, I didn't get any sets that had the bonus card (the set Dan sent me actually came from George originally who pulled an Isao Harimoto auto from his unopened set).

There are 77 different players who appear at least in at least one of these sets.  31 of those 77 appear in all three sets.  The players run the gamut from very famous (there are five Hall Of Famers and six Meikyukai members) to extremely obscure (Tatsuya Shiokawa) with a lot of guys falling in between.  There's only one foreign player - Randy Bass.  The oldest players are Eiji Bando and Harimoto while the youngest player was Shiokawa.  Here's a list of all the players who appear in the sets:

Player	DOB	2009	2010	2012	Hall Of Fame	Meikyukai
Awano, Hideyuki	1964-07-28	x	x
Bando, Eiji	1940-04-15	x	x	x
Bass, Randy	1954-03-13	x	x	x
Egawa, Suguru	1955-05-25		x
Enatsu, Yutaka	1948-05-15		x
Endo, Kazuhiko	1955-04-19			x
Gotoh, Koji	1969-05-14	x
Hamanaka, Osamu	1978-07-09			x
Harimoto, Isao	1940-06-19	x	x	x	1990	x
Hashimoto, Kiyoshi	1969-05-22	x	x	x
Hata, Shinji	1962-07-29	x	x
Hatsushiba, Kiyoshi	1967-02-26	x	x	x
Higashio, Osamu	1950-05-18	x	x	x	2010	x
Hikono, Toshikatsu	1964-10-12		x
Hirosawa, Katsumi	1962-04-10		x	x
Ikeda, Chikafusa	1959-05-17		x
Ikegaya, Kojiro	1952-06-28	x	x	x
Ikeyama, Takahiro	1965-12-17		x
Imanaka, Shinji	1971-03-06		x
Ishige, Hiromichi	1956-09-22	x	x	x
Ishii, Hiroo	1964-06-21	x		x
Ishii, Masahiro	1960-09-04	x	x
Itoh, Tsutomu	1962-08-29	x			2017
Iwata, Toru	1967-02-12			x
Kakefu, Masayuki	1955-05-09	x		x
Kanemura, Satoru	1976-04-19			x
Kanemura, Yoshiaki	1963-08-27	x	x	x
Kawamata, Yonetoshi	1960-08-04	x	x
Kawatoh, Kozo	1949-07-05	x	x	x
Kobayakawa, Takehiko	1961-11-15		x
Kohda, Isao	1965-05-29			x
Kohno, Hirofumi	1962-04-28	x
Komada, Norihiro	1962-09-14		x	x		x
Kubo, Fumio	1962-12-03	x	x	x
Kuwata, Masumi	1968-04-01	x	x	x
Makihara, Hiromi	1963-08-11	x	x	x
Matsumoto, Tadashi	1954-08-08	x	x	x
Miyamoto, Kazutomo	1964-02-13	x	x	x
Mizuno, Katsuhito	1965-09-03	x	x	x
Motoki, Daisuke	1971-12-30		x	x
Naitoh, Naoyuki "Gyaos"	1968-07-24		x
Nakahama, Hiroyuki	1978-04-10			x
Nishioka, Yoshihiro	1961-06-28		x
Nishizaki, Yukihiro	1964-04-13	x	x	x
Nomura, Hiroki	1969-06-30			x
Nomura, Kenjiro	1966-09-19	x				x
Ohno, Yutaka	1955-08-30	x			2013
Ohsawa, Keiji	1932-03-14	x	x
Ohtsuka, Koji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Ohya, Akihiko	1947-12-20		x	x
Okada, Akinobu	1957-11-25	x
Onoue, Akira	1959-04-22	x
Sadaoka, Shoji	1956-01-29	x	x	x
Saitoh, Akio	1955-02-23	x	x	x
Sano, Motokuni	1958-03-06	x	x	x
Sano, Shigeki	1968-04-30	x	x	x
Sasaoka, Shinji	1967-08-26	x	x	x
Satoh, Hiroshi	1962-06-09	x	x	x
Satoh, Kazuhiro "Punch"	1964-12-03	x	x	x
Shiokawa, Tatsuya	1983-03-15			x
Shoji, Tomohisa	1953-05-30	x	x	x
Takagi, Yutaka	1957-10-22	x	x
Takahashi, Masahiro	1964-07-10	x	x	x
Takashiro, Nobuhiro	1954-05-27	x
Takeda, Kazuhiro	1965-06-22	x
Tanaka, Yukio	1967-12-14	x				x
Tao, Yasushi	1954-01-08	x	x	x
Tomashino, Kenji	1966-10-11	x	x	x
Wakana, Yoshiharu	1953-12-05	x	x	x
Yamakura, Kazuhiro	1955-09-02		x
Yamamoto, Kazunori	1957-10-18		x
Yamamoto, Koji (1946)	1946-10-25	x	x	x	2008	x
Yamamoto, Koji (1951)	1951-12-25	x
Yashiki, Kaname	1959-06-11	x	x	x
Yoda, Tsuyoshi	1965-12-04			x
Yojoh, Minoru	1966-09-27			x
Yoshimura, Sadaaki	1963-04-27			x

Here are two sample cards from each set:

09 BBM The Premium Malts #10

09 BBM The Premium Malts #45

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #04

2010 BBM The Premium Malts #53

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #25

2012 BBM The Premium Malts #01

These are kind of fun little sets although I'm not sure I've really missed BBM continuing to do them.  Part of the problem I have with the sets is that the same players appear over and over.  I suspect there's been enough turnover in the players who appear in the games since 2012 that a new set would be more interesting.  Some of the players who appeared in last year's game include Atsuya Furuta, Akinori Iwamura, Tadashi Settsu, Yoshinobu Takahashi and Kei Igawa - it might be fun to see what they look like now that they've been retired for awhile.

Thanks to George and Dan for getting me the 2012 set.

Card Of The Week April 26

Let's file this under "things I think about while avoiding more serious questions"...

When the NPB season will begin this year still remains an open question.  It won't begin until sometime in June at the earliest.  The most recent thing I heard was that the league was still going to attempt to have each team play 125 games - basically their original number of games minus the 18 interleague games.  This seems somewhat aggressive to me - I suspect that the number of games will turn out to be more like 100 or so per team, unless NPB either schedules Monday games or doubleheaders.  Obviously I'll take whatever I can get under the circumstances.  I expect we'll have more NPB games than MLB games this year.

I've been monitoring Takeya Nakamura's progress towards 500 home runs for the past few seasons and I'm wondering how much an abbreviated schedule is going to affect the likelihood of him reaching this milestone.  He's 36 years old (and will turn 37 in August) and is 85 home runs away from 500 home runs.  He's been remarkably productive over the past few years despite having somewhat diminished playing time - he's averaged almost 30 home runs a season in the seven seasons since he turned 30 despite only playing in over 120 games in two of those seasons (he's averaged 117 games a year over that time).  Even if the Lions somehow end up playing 125 games this year I figure he will not play in all of them.  A schedule of double headers and no off days will be tough on all the players and especially an older one with a history of nagging injuries.  I was worried already that his production was going to diminish over the next few seasons and this will probably put a further crimp in it. 

As I've mentioned before, if Nakamura doesn't reach 500 home runs, I don't know who might.  The most home runs by any active player under 30 years of age is Tetsuto Yamada with 202.  If he stays in Japan he's certainly could make a run at it (especially if he continues playing in Jingu Stadium) but obviously he's a long way off.

Here's a card of Nakamura from the 2004 BBM Lions set (#58):

2006 World Baseball Classic Roundup - Relics

The posts I've done in the past on the available cards for the 2006 World Baseball Classic rosters for both the Japanese and Korean teams were a little light on details about the available memorabilia cards.  I've done some research and recently picked up some cards from Sportslots and COMC so I thought I'd do a post just on the memorabilia cards.

Upper Deck had the license to do cards for the 2006 Classic and as far as I can tell they only included relic cards related to the tournament in five of their products that year - Flair Showcase, SPx, Upper Deck, Upper Deck Exquisite and Sweet Spot Update.

There were eleven twelve players from the Japanese team that had memorabilia cards - Akinori Iwamura, Munenori Kawasaki, Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Michihiro Ogasawara, Naoyuki Shimizu, Ichiro Suzuki, Hitoshi Tamura, Koji Uehara, Tsuyoshi Wada and Shunsuke Watanabe.  These are the only WBC cards for Ogasawara and Shimizu - they did not have any cards in any of the non-memorabilia WBC sets Upper Deck did that year.

There are only four players from the Korean team who have relic cards - Hee-Seop Choi, Jong-Beom Lee, Jin-Man Park and Min-Han Son.

The Flair Showcase set had associated set of memorabilia cards called "Showcase Stitches".  Most of these were for MLB players - not MLB players on WBC teams but MLB players on MLB teams - but there were a few for WBC players.  The only player from either Japan or Korea who was in this set was Daisuke Matsuzaka:

There were two sets of memorabilia cards available with the SPx set - "Winning Materials" and "Winning Big Materials".  The "Winning Materials" cards were all jersey cards while I believe the "Winning Big Materials" cards were all patch cards and were all serially numbered.  Eleven of the twelve Japanese players appear in both sets - the only one not in it was Matsuzaka.  Their "Winning Big Materials" cards are all numbered to 30 with the exception of Ichiro whose card is only numbered to 5.  Oddly enough only three of the four Korean players are in the "Winning Materials" set - Choi, Lee and Son - but all four of them are in the "Winning Big Materials" set.  Choi's card is numbered to 32, Lee's is numbered to 20, Park's is numbered to 22 and Son's is numbered to 24.  I have six of the "Winning Materials" cards but none of the "Winning Big Materials" cards:

The 2006 Upper Deck flagship set also had two associated relic sets - "WBC Jersey Collection" and "WBC Patch Collection".  The "WBC Jersey Collection" only included three players from each of the two teams - Nishioka, Wada and Watanabe from Japan and Lee, Park and Son from Korea.  The "WBC Patch Collection" cards were each serially numbered to 8.  All eleven of the Japanese players appeared in this set but only the three Korean players from the Jersey set appeared in this one.  Both sets included 11 of the 12 Japanese players (everyone but Shimizu) and three of the Korean players (Lee, Park and Son).  The patch cards were serially numbered to 8.  I again only have cards from the Jersey cards:

I don't know much about the Upper Deck Exquisite set but I assume from the name it was a high end set.  It had a variety of patch cards for Matsunaka, Matsuzaka and Ichiro, including one that featured all three of them.  I don't know if the cards were serially numbered or not.  None of the other Japanese players nor any of the Korean players were included.  I don't have any of these cards.

Finally Upper Deck's "Sweet Spot Update" set also had two memorabilia sets associated with it.  As with the SPx and flagship sets, one of these featured jersey cards ("Sweet Beginnings Swatches") and the other featured patch cards ("Sweet Beginnings Patches").  Eleven of the twelve Japanese players appeared in both sets (only Matsuzaka was not) but while all four Korean players were in the Swatches set, only Lee, Park and Son were in the Patches set.  I do not know if the Patches cards were serially numbered.  I only have one of the Swatches cards:

5/7/20 UPDATE - it turns out that I can't count.  There were actually 12 Japanese players with relic cards.  I've updated the count and which players appeared in which sets.  And somehow I really messed up the WBC Jersey and Patch cards.