The Return Of Topps, Another WBC Set and More Team Sets

I wanted to do a quick post about some recently announced sets...

- Topps is back with the third edition of their NPB set.  Like the previous ones, the base set for this year's version will contain 216 cards - 18 per team.  Like last year's set, those 18 cards per team will include cards of the team's manager.  There are three insert sets - "Topps 2001", "Player Chairman" and "Record Update".  Not sure how large the insert sets are but the total number of cards for all three sets is 60 so I'd guess two of them have 24 cards and the other has 12.  I'm also guessing that the "Topps 2001" cards feature current NPB players in cards using the 2001 Topps design (like the 1986 and 1958 style cards from the last two sets).  There will be multiple parallel versions of the base and insert cards and apparently there will be multiple types of autograph cards available.  The set will be released on May 13th.  I'm cautiously optimistic that this year's set will be an improvement over the previous two for kind of a silly reason - it looks like Topps actually made an effort with their packaging.  The boxes and packs for the previous two sets were very drab and utilitarian - just showing the team logos.  The ones for this set look more like the BBM and Epoch ones - they show photos of one player from each team.  I'm also heartened by the fact that the set will be out much earlier in the year than the previous ones - the 2021 set came out in November and the 2022 set came out in September.

- Topps Japan is issuing one more World Baseball Classic related set - an on-demand team set for Samurai Japan.  Each set has 35 cards although it looks like two of them are parallels so maybe the base set is only 33 cards.  The sets are on sale though May 6th and cost 7700 yen if you're in Japan.  If you're in the US the set's "only" 7000 (you don't have to pay the 700 yen VAT) but shipping to the US costs 3900 yen for a total cost of 10900 yen (around $83).

- BBM released information about another of their "comprehensive" team sets - this one's for the Giants.  I'm going to continue putting the details for the set in a table, even if it's a little silly when there's only one row in the table.  And I'll just copy & paste what I've said about the team sets previously:  Each set has a base set of 81 cards, most of which are "regular" player cards featuring the manager and the players on the 70 man roster plus a couple subsets (which may not be fully defined yet) to fill out the set.  Each set also has 18 non-premium insert cards split into a variety of sets which also may not be fully defined yet.  The Treasure, Esperanza and Antique inserts are all serially numbered.  (If it's not obvious, the "Regular Cards", "Treasure", "Esperanza" and "Antique" columns are the total number of those type of cards in each set)

Release Date	Team	Regular Cards	Subsets	Non-Premium Inserts	Treasure	Esperanza	Antique	Other
Late May	Giants	60	Mascot/Checklist (1), Giant Potential (8), Strings Of Giants (7), Changes Of Giants (5)	Giants Pride (15), Wonderful Rookie (3)	20	15		Additional Premium Insets of Cross Foil Signing (15), Combo Cross Foil Signing (2), Triple Cross Foil Signing (1), Triplex (3), Super Metallic Giants (9)

- Epoch has released information about their "Premier Edition" team sets for the Tigers, Lions and Hawks.  The base set for the Tigers set contains 39 cards while the Lions and Hawks sets each have 36 cards.  Each base set card has a holographic parallel.  All three sets have the same massive amount of insert cards - "Regular Printed Signature (Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram A: Gold)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Silver)" (9 cards), "Regular Printed Signature Variation (Hologram B: Gold)" (9 cards), "Metal Power (Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram A: Gold)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Silver)" (18 cards), "Metal Power (Hologram B: Gold)" (18 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram A)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram B)" (6 cards), "Time To Shine (Hologram C)" (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Gold) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Green) (6 cards), "Decomori Signature (Hologram) (6 cards), "Gem" (6 cards) and "Black Gem" (6 cards).  There are four types of autograph cards associated with each set - "Authentic", "Rookie", "Star'" and "1 Of 1" and the Lions and Hawks sets have a fifth type - "Baseball".  The Tigers set will be out on May 20th, the Lions set will be out on June 3rd and the Hawks set will be released on June 10th.

Card Of The Week April 9

Former Softbank Hawk and current Chicago White Sock Oscar Colas hit his first MLB home run on Friday.  Colas spent a couple years as a development player for the Hawks before moving on to their 70 man roster in 2019.  He played in seven games with the top team that year, hitting .278 with one home run (that he hit in his first at bat).  He defected in early 2020 and didn't play at all for two years - the Hawks put him on the restricted list for a year and then he had to sit out all of 2021 after coming to an agreement with the White Sox due to them apparently having already spent their international free agent money.  He spent last year working his way through the Chicago's farm system, making stops in Winston-Salem, Birmingham and Charlotte and made the big league squad with a strong spring training performance.

Here's an Epoch One card commemorating Colas' first (and only) NPB home run (#505 from the 2019 set):

Shoichi Inoh

Former Baystars and Giants pitcher Shoichi Inoh is another player who retired at the end of last year.  Inoh attended Jobu University and then joined the NTT East Japan corporate league team after graduation.  He spent four years with NTT before trying to join NPB and so he was 26 when he was drafted by the DeNA in the third round of the 2012 draft.  

He spent his first year bouncing between the top team and the farm team but he made a name for himself with a complete game victory against the Giants on September 28th.  He was the first rookie pitcher for the team to have a complete game victory against Yomiuri in 36 years.  

Inoh spent most of his career with DeNA in the starting rotation for the ichi-gun team although he made a couple appearances on their minor league team each year as well.  He only posted winning records in a couple seasons - 2014 (11-9) and 2018 (6-3).  He made the All Star team in 2014, 2016 and 2017 and pitched in the 2017 Nippon Series.  He also threw a no-hitter with the farm team in 2018.

He left the Baystars as s free agent following the 2020 season and signed with Yomiuri.  He had a disastrous first outing with the Giants, giving up five hits and four earned runs in an inning plus against the Dragons in the fifth game of the season and got banished to the farm the next day.  That one bad outing seems to have pretty much caused Yomiuri to bury him - he only made four more appearances the rest of the season with the top team and ended the year with an 0-1 record and a 14.40 ERA.  He didn't get a lot more opportunity last year, making only seven appearances (but only pitching five innings) although he did go 1-0 with a 1.80 ERA.

Having only gotten 12 appearances out of him after a two year, 200 million yen contract, the Giants were not interested in renewing his contract at the end of 2022.  Inoh attended the 12-team tryout in Miyagi in November but didn't draw any interest.  He announced his retirement at the end of December and will be a lecturer at the Giants Academy this year.

Inoh's first BBM cards were in the 2013 BBM Rookie Edition (#37), 1st Version (#159), 2nd Version (#538) and Baystars (#DB07) sets.  He also had rookie cards in the 2013 Bandai Owners League 03 set (#061), and the Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars (#22) and Season Summary (#20) sets.  He had a Star card in the 2014 Calbee Series Three set (#S-69) but his first "regular" base set Calbee card wasn't until 2015 Series One (#074).  Here's TCDB.com's list of his cards and here's a handful of them:

2013 BBM Rookie Edition #37

2013 BBM 1st Version #159

2014 Front Runner Baystars Rookies & Young Stars #15

2015 Calbee #074

2016 Epoch Baystars Season Achievements #4

2017 Baystars BSpirit #15

2018 BBM 1st Version #219

2020 BBM Baystars #DB06

2022 BBM Giants #G09

Tetsuya Utsumi

Another 2022 retiree was Tetsuya Utsumi, pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants and Saitama Seibu Lions.  Utsumi was a first round pick of the Orix BlueWave in the 2000 draft but he refused to sign.  His grandfather Iso Utsumi has played for the Giants in the late 1930's and young Tetsuya didn't want to sign with anyone other than Yomiuri.  He spent the next three years playing with Tokyo Gas of the corporate leagues before agreeing to a deal with Yomiuri in the "free acquisition" portion of the 2003 draft.  The Giants assigned him uniform number 26, the same number that his grandfather had worn.

He spent most of his first season on the farm but was up with the ichi-gun squad pretty much to stay in 2005.  He was in the starting rotation in 2005 but briefly moved to middle relief to start 2006.  He didn't stay working out of the bullpen for very long though as an injury to Hisanori Takahashi put him back in the rotation.  He made his opportunity pay off, going 12-13 with a 2.78 ERA for the fourth place, sub-.500 Giants.  

He continued to be a solid starter for the Giants, winning in double digits every season between 2007 and 2013 except 2009.  His best season was probably 2011, when he had a record of 18-5 with an ERA of 1.70.  He missed some time in 2014 and 2015 with shoulder and forearm injuries respectively and when he was healthy again he wasn't as effective as he had been before.  His playing time diminished over the next several years before he was sent to the Lions as compensation for the Giants signing Ginjiro Sumitani as a free agent after the 2018 season.

A forearm injury limited him to the Lions' farm team in 2019 and he had surgery at the end of the season.  He finally made his Lions ichi-gun debut in August of 2020 but he didn't pitch well, going 1-2 with an ERA of 4.26 in four starts.  His 2021 numbers were worse - a 7,71 ERA in two starts (although he did manage to win one of those starts).  The Lions made him a player-coach for 2022 and he got into five games with the top team, going 0-1 with an ERA of 3.00.  He announced his retirement in August and is the pitching coach for the Lions ni-gun team this year.

Utsumi led the Central League in wins twice (2011 & 2012) and strikeouts once (2007).  He won a Best 9 award in 2012 and made the All Star team five times (2006, 2007, 2010-2012).  He played in four Nippon Series (2008, 2009, 2012 and 2013), winning the Series MVP award in 2012 and an "Outstanding Player" award in the 2013 Series.  He pitched for the Japanese team in both the 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics.

His first baseball cards are from the 2004 BBM Rookie Edition (#52), 1st Version (#273) and Giants (#G11) sets.  His first Calbee card was from the 2005 Series Two set (#135).  His listing of cards at TCDB.com can be found here and here's a bunch of those cards:

2004 BBM Rookie Edition #52

2004 BBM 1st Version #273

2006 BBM All Stars #A51

2008 BBM 1st Version #453

2009 BBM Giants Expression #03

2012 BBM Nippon Series #S67

2013 Topps Tribute WBC #89

2014 BBM Giants #G009

2016 Giants Highlights

2018 Calbee #204

2019 BBM 1st Version #008 (Secret Version)

2020 Epoch Lions Rookies & Stars #11

2022 BBM Lions #L15

Shun Yamaguchi

Former Baystars and Giants pitcher Shun Yamaguchi formally announced his retirement last week.  Yamaguchi was Yokohama's first round pick in the high school portion of the 2005 draft out of Yanagigaura High School.  He spent most of his time during his first couple seasons on the farm, working as a starter in 2006 and 2007 before converting to middle relief in 2008.  He was up with the ichi-gun squad for good in 2009, starting the season in a setup role before taking over as closer midway through the season.  He ended the season with 18 saves and would save 30, 34 and 22 games in each of the next three years.  A poor season in 2013 cost him his closer role and he struggled in the first half of 2014 as well before the Baystars moved him back into the starting rotation.  He turned his season around, going 8-5 and lowering his ERA to 2.90 by the end of the season after it had ballooned to 7.62 at the end of May.  After a so-so season in 2015 he bounced back in 2016 with an 11-5 record with a 2.86 ERA.  A shoulder injury sidelined him for the last month of the season though and he missed out on an opportunity to play in the postseason.

A free agent, he left the Baystars after that season and signed with the Yomuri Giants.  The shoulder injury he'd suffered in 2016 was still bothering him the next season and he didn't make his first start with the top team until June.  It was an auspicious debut, though, as he combined with Scott Mathieson and Arquimedes Caminero to no-hit the Hawks.  It would be his only win of the season, however, as he injured his hand while getting drunk on his birthday at the end of July and had an incident at the hospital in which - while still drunk - damaged a door and assaulted a security guard.  He would miss the remainder of the season between the injury and being suspended by the team.

He came back in 2018 to post a 9-9 record with an ERA of 3.68.  The highlight of his season was his no-hitter (all by himself this time) against the Dragons on July 27th.  He was pressed into service as closer towards the end of the season and notched his first save since 2013.

2019 would prove to be his best season as he would go 15-4 with a 2.91 ERA and 188 strikeouts for the Central League champion Giants.  He got to pitch in the Nippon Series for the first and only time and then was a member of the Samurai Japan team that won the 2019 Premier 12.  

He asked the Giants to post him after the 2019 season and, surprisingly, they did - it was surprising since the Giants had never posted a player before.  Yamaguchi signed a two year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays but it did not go well - he went 2-4 with a 8.06 ERA in 17 games in the COVID-shortened season.  The Jays released him just before spring training started in 2021 and he signed with the Giants - the San Francisco variety.  He started the season with Triple-A Sacramento and went 0-3 with an ERA of 6.17 in five games (including four starts).  San Francisco released him and he returned to Japan and Yomiuri in June.  He went 2-8 with a 3.59 ERA in the remainder of the season.  He suffered knee and calf injuries that sidelined him for much of 2022 - he only pitched two innings in one game with the ichi-gun team before being released at the end of the year.  He attended the 12-team tryout but only drew interest from the Oita B-Rings of the independent Kyushi Asian League.  With no NPB offers he decided to retire.

He was selected to the All Star team four times (2010, 2011, 2016 and 2019) although he declined the honor in 2016.  He led the Central League in wins, winning percentage and strikeouts in 2019 along with winning the Best 9 award that season.

His first card was #68 from the 2006 BBM Rookie Edition set.  His other rookie cards from 2006 are BBM 1st Version #320, BBM Baystars #YB02 and #YB79 and Calbee #261.  TCDB.com's list of his cards can be found here.  Here's some of his cards - I did a post for him back when he left for MLB that showed a bunch of his cards so I tried to mostly pick different ones:

2006 BBM Rookie Edition #68

2006 BBM 1st Version #320

2007 BBM 1st Version #398

2010 BBM All Stars #A15

2012 BBM 1st Version #299

2013 Calbee #108

2016 Baystars BSpirit #11

2016 Kabaya/Epoch Central League Gum #31

2018 BBM Fusion #067

2019 BBM Fusion #TH18

2021 BBM Fusion #616

2022 Epoch NPB #075

Chihiro Kaneko

I had to hold off on some of the retirement posts I wanted to do until I had the 2022 BBM team sets since a number of the players only appeared in them (or at least they were the only sets I was getting that they appeared in).  So even though the 2023 season has begun, I'm still finishing up last year.  (Although to be fair, one of the players I'll be doing didn't announce he was retiring until last week.)

First up is Orix and Nippon-Ham pitcher Chihiro Kaneko.  Kaneko spent a couple years playing for Toyota in the corporate leagues after graduating from high school in Nagano.  He was the top pick in the 2004 draft by the newly renamed Orix Buffaloes - technically he was selected in the "free acquisition frame" which essentially allowed him and Orix to come to an agreement without the possibility of other teams drafting him.  He made his debut with the top team in 2006, getting into 21 games mostly out of the bullpen.  He moved into the starting rotation in 2007 and stayed there for most of his time with Orix (with the exception of the last month of the season in 2009 when he was the team's closer).  He posted double digit wins in six of the seven years between 2008 and 2014, missing only in 2012 when injuries limited him to just nine games).

He put together a great season in 2013, going 15-8 with an ERA of 2.01 and 200 strikeouts.  The only problem was that nobody noticed since that was the year that Masahiro Tanaka went 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA (but only 183 strikeouts).   So Kaneko essentially did it again in 2014, going 16-5 with a 1.98 ERA and 199 strikeouts.  With Tanaka gone to MLB and Orix ending the season in a virtual tie with Softbank (although the Hawks won the Pacific League pennant by just two percentage points), Kaneko won both the Sawamura Award and the PL MVP award.  He entertained thoughts of going to MLB that winter but needed elbow surgery and resigned with the Buffaloes.

He missed time during the 2015 and 2016 seasons with elbow and shoulder injuries but bounced back in 2017 to go 12-8 with an ERA of 3.47.  He again missed time with injuries in 2018 and left Orix as a free agent at the end of the season, signing on with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama used him as an "opener" in 2019 and he pitched pretty well in the role, going 8-7 with a 3.04 ERA that season.  His remaining three seasons with Nippon-Ham were not as successful and the team released him at the end of last season.  He wasn't able to latch on with another team and announced his retirement in late December.  He'll be a coach for the Fighters this season and spent some time in spring training this year in the Texas Rangers camp.

Besides the MVP and Sawamura awards in 2014, Kaneko also won his only Best 9 and Golden Glove awards.  He led the PL in wins in 2010 and 2014, ERA in 2014 and strikeouts in 2013.  He made three All Star teams (2009, 2014 and 2019) but never played in a Nippon Series.  

His first baseball cards were from the 2005 BBM Rookie Edition (#25) and 1st Version (#202), and Buffaloes team (#Bs08) sets.  He appeared in either or both of BBM's "flagship" sets every year from 2007 until 2020.  His first Calbee card wasn't until 2008 Series One (#095).  The TCDB.com list of his cards is here and here's a bunch of them:

2005 BBM Rookie Edition #25

2005 BBM 1st Version #202

2008 Calbee #OP-23

2009 BBM All Stars #A09

2011 Orix Bs Club #4

2012 BBM Buffaloes #BsM1

2013 Front Runner Buffaloes Season Summary #06

2014 Calbee #097

2016 Calbee #ES-05

2019 BBM 1st Version #058

2022 BBM Fighters #F08

One more thing about Kaneko - he changed the Kanji for his name from "金子 千尋" to "金子 弌大" when he signed with the Fighters although the English version remained the same.   You can see this change on the backs of his 2005 and 2019 1st Version cards:

Card Of The Week - April 2

Lions pitcher Kaima Taira has been dynamite out of the bullpen the last few seasons but over the winter he told the team he wanted to become a starter.  The Lions agreed and he made the first start of his career today against the Buffaloes.  He pitched very well, striking out nine and giving up one run on five hits and three walks.  The one run was on a solo home run by Marwin Gonzalez that tied the game in the seventh.  The Lions rallied to score three runs in the bottom of the eighth to get their first win of the season but since he left the game after the seventh, Taira didn't get the win.

Here's a team-issued card of Taira from 2020 that Ryan picked up for me a while back.  I believe this card was given away with meals out at Seibu Dome but I'm not positive about that: