Yuta Shirahama

Long time Carp farmhand Yuta Shirahama retired at the end of last season.  Shirahama was born in Sakai but went to high school at Koryo High School in Hiroshima.  He played in four consecutive Koshien Tournaments - 2002 Spring and Summer and 2003 Spring and Summer - with Koryo winning the 2003 Spring tournament.  He hit 28 home runs in high school and was the first pick of the Carp in the 2003 draft.

It's not unusual for a player drafted out of high school to play exclusively on the farm team for a couple years after being drafted.  What IS unusual is for a player to not make their ichi-gun debut for EIGHT years after being drafted, especially if that player was a first round pick.  It's not clear to me why, but Shirahama didn't make his top team debut until October 6th, 2011.  

Ultimately Shirahama only appeared in 90 ichi-gun games between 2011 and 2022, hitting just .153.  The most games he got into in a season was 35 in 2012 and the only other year he got into more than seven games was 2014 when he played in 30.  The Carp released him at the end of last season and he retired, taking a scorer job with the team.

It would be a fair question to ask why I decided to do a retirement post for Shirahama.  The reason is that he somehow managed to have a 19 year career with the Carp despite not ever being productive.  This certainly is not something that would have happened with an MLB team and it's somewhat unusual for an NPB team too. 

Shirahama's list of baseball cards at TCDB is kind of interesting.  After his rookie cards in the 2004 BBM Rookie Edition (#64) and 1st Version (#338) sets, almost all of his cards were in team sets from either BBM or Epoch.  He never had any Calbee cards but he did appear in two Konami sets (2011 Baseball Heroes Opening Version White #B11RW125 & 2012 Baseball Heroes Black #B12RB251) and three Bandai sets (2012 Owners League 03 #OL12-131, 2013 Owners League 02 #045 and 2014 Owners League 02 #107).  Here's some of his cards:

2004 BBM Rookie Edition #64

2004 BBM 1st Version #338

2014 Bandai Owners League 02 #107

2016 BBM Carp #C35

2018 BBM Carp #C39

2022 BBM Carp #C40

Ayatsugu Yamashita

The Hawks' 2010 NPB draft was probably one of their best ever.  They took a generational talent, Yuki Yanagita, with their second round pick and hit the jackpot in the development player portion of the draft, taking Kodai Senga, Taisei Makihara and Takuya Kai.  Their first round pick from this draft was a catcher out of Narashino High School in Chiba named Ayatsugu Yamashita.

To be fair, Yamashita was not actually the Hawks' original first round pick.  Softbank was one of four teams that had initally selected Waseda University pitcher Yuki Saitoh.  When Nippon-Ham won the lottery for Saitoh's rights, the Hawks selected Yamashita.

Yamashita spent his entire first season on the Hawks' farm team, hitting .207 in 82 games.  Softbank shipped him off to Australia at the end of the season and he hit .340 in 16 games with the Brisbane Bandits.  He apparently overslept in training camp in 2012 and got banished to the farm team again for the season, hitting .206 in 93 games.  He again was sent overseas at the end of the season, playing eleven games in the Taiwan Winter League (although I don't know how well he played).

His batting average on the farm improved to .256 in 2013 and he finally made an appearance with the ichi-gun team, getting into 11 games total.  He missed some time with injuries the next two seasons but he opened the 2016 season as the Hawks starting catcher (and had changed his registered name to just "Ayatsugu").  He only played in 13 games on the top team though, hitting .231 before being sent back to the farm.  By 2017 Takuya Kai had taken over as the Hawks starting catcher and Yamashita spent almost the entire season on the ni-gun squad.  The Hawks traded him that off season to the Eagles for Tetsuro Nashida.

He went back to using his full name with the Eagles and got into a career high 43 games in 2018.  He followed that up with 31 games in 2019.  But his batting average fell to .198 in 2018 and .183 in 2019.  He only played in eight games with the top team in 2020 and the Eagles released him at the end of the year.

He signed a development player contract with the Dragons for 2021 but played well enough on their farm team that he was moved to the 70 man roster at the beginning of June and promoted to the ichi-gun team.  He didn't hit though, posting an average of .100 in 5 games and was sent back down to the farm for the rest of the season.  Last year was more of the same - he hit decently on the farm team but only hit .130 with the top team.  The Dragons released him at the end of the season and he announced his retirement.  He's currently running a bar he owns in the Nishiki area of Nagoya.

Yamashita's BBM rookie cards are from the 2011 Rookie Edition (#001), 1st Version (#023) and Hawks (#H39) sets.  He also had 2011 cards in the Bandai Owners League 02 (#OL06002), Calbee Series One (#D-01) and Konami Opening Version White (#B11RW004 and #B11DR001) sets.  He also had several cards in the two Brisbane Bandits team sets from 2011-12.  TCDB's list of his cards can be found here.  Here's some of his cards:

2011 BBM Rookie Edition #001

2011 BBM 1st Version #023

2011-12 Brisbane Bandits Series One #014

2014 Hawks Players Card #22

2017 BBM Hawks #H34

2019 Eagles Team Set #40

2020 Epoch NPB #087

2022 BBM Dragons #D34

Card Of The Week April 16

In honor of yesterday being Jackie Robinson Day, Jim Allen's blog post today had a couple paragraphs on why Dragons' outfielder Kenta Bright wears uniform number 42.  His father is from Ghana and taught him about Robinson.  Robinson became one of Bright's heroes growing up and he specifically picked Robinson's number when the Dragons drafted him in 2021.  Here's a 2022 Topps NPB card (#167) of Bright that clearly shows him wearing the number:

Ken Togame

Here's a quick retirement post for Lions pitcher Ken Togame.  He had spent a couple years playing for JR East of the corporate leagues after attending Nihon University and was taken in the first round of the 2011 draft by the Lions.  

He worked out of the bullpen his first season before moving into the starting rotation in 2013 where he pretty much remained for the next seven years.  His best season was probably 2015 when he went 11-7 with a 3,55 ERA and made the All Star team for the only time.  The Lions moved him into the bullpen where he remained for the rest of his career.  He pitched poorly in a limited number of games last year and decided to retire at the end of the season.  He's currently a scout for the Lions.

Togame had a number of rookie cards in 2012.  He appears in several sets from BBM including Rookie Edition (#019), 1st Version (#077), the Lions team set (#L11), Genesis (#022) and Rookie Edition Premium (#RP07).  He also had cards that year in the Bandai Owners League 02 (#26), Calbee Series Two (#089) and Konami Baseball Heroes White (#B12RW027).  TCDB's list of his cards is here.  Here are some of his cards - the 2012 Lions Winning Game Card commemorates the game he got his first hold in:

2012 BBM Rookie Edition #019

2012 BBM 1st Version #077

2012 Lions Winning Game Card #20

2014 Front Runner Lions Signature Edition #05

2016 BBM The Ballpark Stories #127

2018 Calbee #154

2020 Epoch NPB #007

2022 BBM Lions #L11

Hiroyuki Fukuyama

Another player who hung up his spikes after the 2022 season was pitcher Hiroyuki Fukuyama.  Fukuyama had played second base in high school but lied on his entrance examination to Osaka University of Commerce and said he had been a pitcher.  He pitched pretty well for the team, going 17-11 with a 1.67 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 46 games.  He was taken in the sixth round of the 2010 draft by the Yokohama Baystars.

Things didn't go too well for him in Yokohama.  He got into 19 games with the top team in his rookie season of 2011 and went 0-1 with a 5.75 ERA.  He only got into two games at that level in 2012 and got lit up in both of them, posting an ERA of 18.00.  The Baystars suggested that he switch back to being a position player to take advantage of his speed but Fukuyama refused.  The team then released him at the end of the 2012 season.

The Eagles picked him that winter and he found got into 22 games in middle relief for Rakuten in the championship year of 2013.  He made the team's Nippon Series roster but didn't see any action.  He then ran off four straight strong seasons of middle relief work, getting into at least 65 games each season including a league leading 69 in 2016.  He had 87 holds and 9 saves during that stretch and made the All Star team for the only time in his career in 2014.  He bookended those four seasons with hist two best ones - going 4-2 with a 1.87 ERA in 2014 and 6-0 with a 1.06 ERA in 2017.

His performance fell off a cliff in 2018 though, as his ERA ballooned to 6.75 in 21 games.  Things didn't get any better the following year as he posted a 5.19 ERA in just seven games before being shut down for arthroscopic surgery on his right elbow and shoulder.  With the expected recovery time being somewhat lengthy, the Eagles released him and resigned him to a development player (ikusei) contract.  

He came back from surgery and pitched well on the farm team in 2020, posting a 0.79 ERA in 12 games before the Eagles moved him back onto the 70 man roster to end the season.  He continued pitching well in 2021, getting into 24 games with a 2.38 ERA despite going 0-2.  He spent most of last season on the farm though, only getting into three games with the ichi-gun team.  The Eagles released him at the end of the season and he announced his retirement shortly afterwards.  He's a scorer for the team this year.

Fukuyama's rookie cards are from 2011 BBM sets - Rookie Edition (#094), 1st Version (#322) and the Baystars team set (#YB23).  His first Calbee card was #175 from 2014 Series Three.  TCDB's listing of his cards can be found here.  Here are some of his cards - note that his uniform number on his 2020 Eagles team set card is "164" - the three digit number indicates that he's an ikusei player:

2011 BBM Rookie Edition #094

2011 BBM 1st Version #322

2014 BBM 2nd Version #452

2016 Calbee #108

2018 Epoch NPB #87

2020 Eagles Team Set 1st Version #37

2021 BBM 2nd Version #347

2022 BBM Eagles #E32

Motohiro Shima

Former Eagles and Swallows catcher Motohiro Shima announced his retirement at the end of last season.  Shima was the third round pick of the Eagles out of Kokugakuin University in the university/corporate league portion of the 2006 draft.  He was pretty much the Eagles regular catcher in his rookie year, despite only hitting .183.  The following year he split catching duties with Akihito Fujii but regained the regular role in 2009 due to Fujii's injuries.

He put together his best season in 2010, hitting .315 and winning the Golden Glove and Best 9 awards.  That Golden Glove award was the first one in Eagles history and he was the first Rakuten catcher to have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting race (he finished some 30 points behind Tsuyoshi Nishioka).  

He was the Eagles regular catcher for most of the 2010s, although injuries started to cut into his playing time.  He missed time due to a hand injury in 2012,  a cracked rib in 2015, back and wrist injuries in 2016 and a calf injury in 2017.  Back pain limited him to just 57 games in 2019 and he and the Eagles parted ways at the end of the season.

Shima signed on with the Swallows for 2020.  He fractured his right thumb during training camp but since the start of the season was delayed until June due to the pandemic, he was healthy for opening day.  Unfortunately though he injured his foot in mid-July and missed most of the rest of the season.  He was healthy in 2021 but barely played, getting into only 17 games as a late inning replacement for Yuhei Nakamura.  The Swallows made him a player-coach for 2022 but he spent most of the season coaching rather than playing, only getting into two games with the ichi-gun squad (and one of those was his retirement game).  He's now a full time coach with the Swallows. 

Shima made the All Star team eight times during his career (2007, 2010-2015, & 2017).  He again won the Best 9 and Golden Glove awards in 2013.  He won a Nippon Series with the Eagles in 2013 and was on the roster for the 2021 champion Swallows but didn't play in the Series as Yuhei Nakamura caught every inning of every game (and won the Series MVP award while doing it).  He was Samurai Japan's roster for the 2015 Premier 12 and had been selected for the 2017 World Baseball Classic team but had to drop out due to an injury.

Shima's first BBM cards were in the 2007 Rookie Edition (#43), 1st Version (#214), 2nd Version (#585), Eagles (#E052), All Stars (#A15) and Rookie Edition Premium (#RP17) sets.  His first Calbee card was also from 2007 - #160 in Series Two.  He also had rookie cards in a couple of Konami's sets that year - #W082 in the Baseball Heroes 3 White set and #C07B067 in the Baseball Heroes 3 Power Up Version set.  And as I've been doing for all these players, here's the link to the cards he has at TCDB and here's a a bunch of his cards:

2007 BBM Rookie Edition #43

2007 BBM 1st Version #214

2008 Calbee #079

2010 BBM All Stars #A49

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #88

2013 Calbee #059

2015 Eagles #SS1-07

2017 Calbee Samurai Japan #SJ-22

2020 BBM 1st Version #309

2022 BBM Swallows #S39

Sasaki Perfection Cards

A year ago today, Roki Sasaki pitched a perfect game.

Hmm, that doesn't really seem to capture what he did.  I mean, yeah, it was a perfect game but it wasn't just a perfect game.  He struck out 19 batters in the game which tied the NPB record set by Koji Noda in 1995.  He struck out 13 in a row from the last batter in the first through the last batter in the fifth, shattering the previous NBP record of nine consecutive strikeouts held jointly by Takao Kajimoto and Masayuki Dobashi.  He struck out the side in five innings (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th & 8th) and struck out the final batter in every other inning.  He threw a total of 105 pitches, 82 of them were strikes.  It was his first complete game victory of his career.  At the tender ago of 20 years and five months of age, he became the youngest pitcher to ever throw a perfect game.  His catcher, Kou Matsukawa, was only 18 years old so the combined age of the battery was just 38 years.

And of course what we didn't know a year ago was that a week later in his next start he would throw another eight perfect innings before coming out of the game (a game the Marines ultimately lost on a Chusei Mannami home run, the only hit their pitching staff gave up).  His 17 consecutive perfect innings was yet another record.

I thought a good way to commemorate the anniversary of this event would be to do a post showing all the baseball cards that depicted the perfect game last year.  All four of the main baseball card producers - BBM, Calbee, Epoch and Topps - issued Sasaki cards with photos from the game.  This is in addition to the "Roki Sasaki - Perfect Game" box set that BBM put out last summer.

Epoch did the first cards for the game, issuing three of their on-demand Epoch One cards for it - one for the perfect game (#108), one for the 13 consecutive strikeouts (#109) and one for the 19 total strikeouts (#110).  Here's the front and back of each of these three cards:

 Calbee ultimately did two cards for the perfect game.  The first was Sasaki's "regular" player card from Series Two (#117):

The second one was from the "Exciting Scene" subset in Series Three (#ES-08) and is technically for the 17 consecutive perfect innings:

Sasaki's card in the Topps NPB set (#80) also uses an image from the perfect game:

BBM's annual Fusion set functions as a season review set and Sasaki's perfect game merited two cards in it - one for the perfect game (#16) and one for the 19 strikeouts (#18):

I'm a little amused that there's three different cards showing Sasaki sitting on the field holding a baseball in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other but all three of the photos are different.

In addition to these cards, there were a bunch of team issued cards of Sasaki, many of which are for the perfect game.  I only have one of these cards but there's a number of them over at COMC.  I don't know how many total cards there are though or how many are for the perfect game.  Here's the one I have:

Finally I should mention that I left out a couple short printed BBM cards that use images from the game.  I don't have either of these but I swiped the images of them from Jambalaya.  There was an "ultra secret version" of Sasaki's 2nd Version card (#502):

And a "secret version" of card #18 from the Fusion set: