Card Of The Week July 1

The Lions were having a rough series against the Eagles this weekend.  Friday night the Eagles clobbered them 15-1 in a game in which Rakuten starter Takahiro Shiomi didn't give up a hit until the seventh.  On Saturday the Eagles trounced Seibu 9-1.  In today's game the Lions were leading 7-3 going into the eighth but the Lions bullpen coughed up three runs in the top of the eighth and another in the top of the ninth to allow the Eagles to tie the game up.  But with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Lions outfielder Fumikazu Kimura launched a home run to straight away center field to win the game 8-7:


Kimura has a kind of odd history.  He was the first round high school draft pick of the Lions in 2006 out of Saitama Sakae High School as a pitcher.  He spent most of his first few years with the farm team.  The Lions sent him to play in both the Hawaiian Winter League (he played for West Oahu in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons) and the Australian Baseball League (he was with the Melbourne Aces in the 2011-12 season).  He converted to being a position player during the 2012 season due to a back injury.   He's primarily used as a late inning defensive replacement.

Here's a card celebrating his first (and only) career pitching win in NPB from the 2012 BBM Lions set (#L77):

2018 Epoch NPB set

I was excited a few months ago when I heard that Epoch was going to be releasing a full flagship set in late May.  I figured that even if the set wasn't all that good it would still put pressure on BBM to up their game.  The fact that the set turned out to be very nice just makes it all better.

The base set contains 432 cards which are all "regular" cards - there are no subsets or team cards.   There are 36 cards per team.  I had been a little concerned that Epoch would do a similar thing to what they've been doing with their Rookies & Stars sets - have 90 cards in a set but only have cards of 70-ish players because some players have multiple versions of their cards.  But Epoch didn't do that - all the cards are for individual players (and of course the 12 managers). 

BBM hasn't done a flagship set this large since the 2013 1st Version set but in fairness that set contained a number of subsets.  The actual number of "regular" cards was only 324 (27 per team).  The last time BBM had 432 "regular" cards in their 1st Version set was 2010.  (You can make the argument that 1st and 2nd Version sets should be considered a single set but even in that case the Epoch set still likely contains more individual players than any BBM combined set since 2010.)

It was a bit of a pain to get the set.  There weren't many complete sets that got listed on Yahoo! Japan Auctions so finding one took a while and I got outbid on the first one I tried.  I ended up getting one for 7000 yen via JAUCE and auctions fees and shipping added another 5460 yen so the total cost worked out to around $120.  This is a little higher than I spend on the 1st Version set this year (around 10700 yen which included shipping for two other sets as well).

One thing I found interesting was Epoch's player selection.  I had expected to find that Epoch had cards of all the guys who showed up in BBM's 1st Version set,  Since BBM's 1st Version set had 27 cards per team I figured that there'd be 9 new players for each team for a total of 108 players who were not in 1st Version.  The number's actually a little higher - 129 to be exact.  BBM's 1st Version set has cards of 21 players who aren't in the Epoch set.  What's interesting is that a large number of the players who aren't in Epoch's set but were in 1st Version are foreign players - Mike Bolsinger, Matt Dominguez, Edger Olmos and Tanner Scheppers of the Marines; Onelki Garcia of the Dragons; Leonel Campos of the Hawks; Nick Martinez, Bryan Rodriguez and Michael Tonkin of the Fighters; Fabio Castillo and Neil Wagner of the Lions; Chia-Hao Sung of the Eagles; Jordan Armengot and David Buchanun of the Swallows; Edison Barrios and Neftali Soto of the Baystars and Taylor Jungmann of the Giants.  That's 17 of the 21.

The players that Epoch included that BBM didn't is interesting.  The fact that Epoch's set went to press later than BBM allowed them to include a card of Koji Uehara who didn't sign with the Giants until March 9th.  The set also includes a number of player that frankly I'm surprised weren't in 1st Version (and I'm kind of disappointed with myself for not noticing that they were missing) - Seiya Inoue of the Marines; Kyuji Fujikawa of the Tigers; Xavier Batista of the Carp; Kazuhiro Hatakeyama and Shingo Kawabata of the Swallows and Spencer Patton of the Baystars.  There's also a handful of players who were more in the "fan favorite" category that were included like Shota Dohbayashi of the Carp and Yuki Saitoh (of course) of the Fighters.

The cards themselves look pretty nice.  One of the complaints that I've had about Epoch's sets in the past is that they frequently use an ugly card design and grainy photographs.  They seem to have avoided that with this set.  The design is pretty nice (although I prefer borderless designs) and the photos are pretty clear.  They have a little of the same issue that I beat up BBM on in that a large percentage of the photos are "pitchers pitching and batters batting" shots but there's a decent mix of other types of shot to still be interesting.

Like BBM Epoch included cards for all the non-ikusei 2017 draft picks for each team in the set.  For some reason all the photos on the cards for the Hawks draft picks are posed studio shots.  All the other draft picks have the typical game/practice "action" shot.

OK, enough talk - here's a bunch of cards so you can see what they look like:

#61

#246

#143

#253

#381

#34

#88

#405

#326

Here's what the back of the cards looks like.  They only list the last three years' worth of statistics.  They do not list non-NPB stats so the three years on the back of Uehara's card are 2006-08.  The photo on the back is a crop of the photo on the front of the card.

#312 (Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh)

So I think it's pretty obvious that I like this set.  I don't have any idea of how popular it is in Japan but again I hope that it puts some pressure on BBM to up their game.

As always Jambalaya has all the cards on-line so you can see the whole set including inserts and parallels.  Ryan did a post on the set yesterday

Shota Ohmine

Really odd story last week - Chiba Lotte Marines infielder Shota Ohmine announced he was retiring at age 26 due to financial issues.  He reportedly owes a lot of money - although none of it for doing anything illegal - and wants a "change of pace".  Ohmine was drafted out of high school in Okinawa in the third round of the 2009 draft by the Marines.  His brother Yuta had been drafted by the Marines in the first round of the 2006 high school draft.  Ohmine's registered name in NPB was just "Shota" until 2014 when he changed it to "Shota Ohmine".  He only played on the farm team his first four years but he made his ichi-gun debut in 2014.  He never spent a lot of time with the top team - he only got into 196 games over five seasons and almost half of that was the 91 games he got into last season.  His career batting average is .210.

He's got a somewhat odd collection of baseball cards.  I was surprised to see that he didn't have a card in the 2010 BBM Rookie Edition set.  I first thought I had messed up somewhere and was missing a card but when I looked at his Japanese wikipedia page I saw that he had been arrested for underage drinking about a month after the 2009 draft and his official signing with the Marines ended up being delayed until mid-January which was apparently after the Rookie Edition set went to press.  (This isn't the only time something like this has happened - Lions pitcher Makoto Aiuchi was arrested for speeding and driving without a license shortly after being a second round pick in the 2012 draft and didn't officially sign with Seibu until March so he missed both the Rookie Edition and 1st Version sets in 2013.)  Ohmine's first card was in the 1st Version set in 2010 and he also had a card in the 2nd Version set that year which is kind of strange considering he only played with the farm team that year.  These were the only BBM flagship cards he has had.  I'm pretty sure his only other BBM cards are from their annual Marines team sets.  He's never had a Calbee card but he showed up in Epoch's flagship NPB set this year.

2010 BBM 1st Version #395

2010 BBM 2nd Version #710

2013 BBM Marines #M51

2015 BBM Marines #M53

2016 BBM Marines #M51

2017 BBM Marines #M54

2018 Epoch NPB #205

I swear I'll be doing a post on the new NPB set soon - probably Friday.

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version Set - Where Are They Now?

I mention from time to time that there's very few opportunities for "pre-rookie" cards in Japan.  This has to do with the way NPB teams structure their rosters and run their farm team.  Think about the way a new player enters into an MLB team's organization.  Typically the player is drafted in June, signs and is assigned to a minor league team.  He may have a baseball card in the team set issued by that minor team, a Bowman set or a minor league set issued by either Topps or Panini.  None of these are necessarily classified as his "rookie" card - that term is reserved for his first card in a "flagship" set once he reaches the major leagues.  The other cards are generally referred to as "pre-rookie" cards.

In Japan however a player typically enters into an NPB team's organization by being drafted in October or November.  They are assigned to the team's 70 man roster which is split between the top team (ichi-gun) and farm team (ni-gun).  At a minimum BBM will issue cards for the player in the Rookie Edition set in February and the 1st Version set in April as well as the "comprehensive" team set for the team.  All of these are considered "rookie" cards for the player.  There are no separate team sets for the team's farm team - it simply doesn't make any sense to do that.

There are some cases where their have been "pre-rookie" cards in Japan.  The 2000 Upper Deck Olympic Baseball team set included a handful of industrial league players who went on to play in NPB - the big names being Shunsuke Watanabe, Toshiya Sugiuchi and Norihiro Akahoshi.  I know of at least one player drafted from the Shikoku Island League who had a card with his team there - Katsuya Kakunaka of the Marines.  Both Upper Deck and Panini have issued memorabilia cards for the Japanese National Collegiate team.   But the biggest example of "pre-rookie" cards in Japan are the eleven collegiate sets that BBM did between 2008 and 2013.

The first of these sets - the 2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set - was issued a little over 10 years ago now and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at where all the players in the set are now.  Of course, that's a bit daunting of a task.  The set contained 60 cards - 54 player cards (9 per team) plus six team cards.  Only eight of those 54 players went into NPB.  I was going to try to figure out if any of the rest of the players had played in the independent or corporate leagues but I realized that I didn't have any way to figure that out.  So I went to the one person I knew who knows a lot about collegiate baseball in Japan - Deanna Rubin - and asked her if she knew of anything like an alumni website for the players but she didn't think there was anything.  She pointed out to me that after 10 years it was unlikely that any of them would still be playing in indy ball or the corporate leagues and that the Tokyo University guys likely didn't keep on playing (there have only been six Tokyo graduates to play in NPB).  So I decided it would be best to concentrate on the eight players who ended up in NPB.

Of these eight players, seven of them went directly to NPB from college.  The other played in the industrial leagues before getting drafted.  Only three of the players are still active in NPB although two others are still playing in the industrial leagues (or at least were as of last year).  Two players are now coaches for NPB teams.  Here's a summary of the players:

Player	College	Year	Drafted	Notes
Kazuhito Futagami	Hosei	3	2009 Tigers 1st	Played for Tigers 2010-16
Takeshi Hosoyamada	Waseda	4	2008 Baystars 4th	Played for Baystars 2009-13, Hawks 2014-15.  Was released by DeNA after 2013 and joined Hawks as ikusei player. Made the Hawks' 70 man roster at the beginning of the 2015 season. Played for Toyota after leaving Hawks
Shinji Iwata	Meiji	4	2008 Dragons 5th	Played for Dragons 2009-16.  Dragons minor league pitching coach starting in 2018
Takeshi Komatsu	Hosei	4	2008 Carp 3rd	Played for Carp 2009-13.  Was on Carp's ikusei squad in 2013 and was "dispatched" to the Tokoshima Indigo Sox of the Shikoku Island League that year.  Minor league coach for the Carp starting in 2018
Keijiro Matsumoto	Waseda	4	2008 Baystars 1st	Played for Baystars 2009-17.  Joined Nippon Steel Sumikin Kazusa Magic in 2018
Kota Suda	Waseda	4	2010 Baystars 1st	Played for JFE East Japan after graduating before being drafted.  Played for Baystars 2011-present
Kenji Tomura	Rikkio	3	2009 Eagles 1st	Played for Eagles 2010-present
Hiroki Uemoto	Waseda	4	2008 Tigers 3rd	Played for Tigers 2009-present

Here's each player's card from the set plus a card of them with their NPB team - I tried to get the most recent card I had for them which isn't necessarily the most recent card they have:

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #31

2016 BBM Tigers #T30

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #4

2015 BBM 2nd Version #338

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #11

2017 BBM Farewell #35

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #29

2010 BBM 1st Version #154

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #9

2017 BBM Baystars #DB67

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #2

2017 BBM 2nd Version #520

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #39

2017 BBM Eagles #E11

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #1

2018 Calbee #043

Of the remaining players, 29 of them had the only baseball card of their lives in this set - Suguru Fugita (Hosei), Teppei Futaba (Rikkio), Raito Hino (Waseda), Tetsuya Ijiri (Tokyo), Daisuke Ikushima (Waseda), Tetsuya Imafuku (Keio), Nobuhiro Itoh (Hosei), Yuki Iwami (Tokyo), Takanori Izumi (Waseda), Yorihiro Kawahata (Waseda), Kaoru Kita (Hosei), Yuto Kobayashi (Meiji), Tetsuro Matsumoto (Hosei), Takayuki Matsuo (Keio), Kohei Morimoto (Keio), Taichi Nakano (Meiji), Ikuto Nishimura (Tokyo), Yuhei Ogawa (Rikkio), Yu Okamura (Rikkio), Naohiro Sakamoto (Keio), Daisuke Sasaki (Meiji), Genki Satoh (Hosei), Masahito Satoh (Meiji), Kazunori Tajima (Meiji), Tetsuya Ubushibata (Keio), Hiroki Umeda (Meiji), Kazuki Utsui (Kazuki), Tomoya Watanabe (Rikkio) and Yusuke Yamagata (Waseda)

The other 17 players appeared in other collegiate sets - Kosuke Aizawa (Keio), Hiroshi Aoyama (Keio), Hirata Furugata (Tokyo), Shohei Hamada (Tokyo), Daisuke Ikarashi (Rikkio), Shuhei Ishikawa (Hosei), Daisuke Kajimoto (Keio), Junpei Komichi (Meiji), Takeru Maehara (Tokyo), Nobuaki Nakabayashi (Keio), Reo Nakayama (Rikkio), Masahito Nihira (Rikkio), Kazuki Nishijima (Meiji), Takahiro Ohtsubo (Tokyo), Yuichi Suzuki (Tokyo), Takeyasu Takahashi (Tokyo) and Shota Waizumi (Hosei).

By the way, you might remember that I tried something like this five years ago.  I only did it for the 2008 collegiate sets and I didn't like the results very well so I didn't continue it.  I figure I've got all my cards in a database now which makes it easier to track who's got cards in other sets.  And it's easier to look back from ten years than from five years.  My plan is to continue this with BBM's other collegiate sets as they reach the 10 year old mark - so there's at least one post I'll be doing in 2023!

Card Of The Week June 24

Inter-league play wrapped up last week and the Swallows were the surprise inter-league "Champions".  It was the first time a Central League team had the best record during inter-league since the Giants did it in 2014.  Oddly enough, however, the Swallows did not have the Inter-league MVP.  That honor went the Masataka Yoshida of the Orix Buffaloes, who finished just a half game behind the Swallows in the inter-league standings.  Yoshida batted .397 during inter-league with 3 home runs and 10 RBIs.  He reached base in every one of the 18 games against the Central League teams.  Here's his card from the new Epoch NPB set from this year (#134):

I got the Epoch NPB set last week and I'll be writing about it soon.

Interleague Home Runs By Pitchers

NPB on Reddit (@NPB_Reddit) sent out a really interesting tweet this morning - in the 14 years since interleague play began seven Pacific League pitchers have hit home runs during the interleague games while no Central League pitchers have homered.  He included the list of the pitchers and I thought I'd do a post showing a card of each of them.  I had intended to show a flagship card of each player from the same year as when they homered but the latest one - Kenta Uehara who did it yesterday - doesn't have a card in a flagship set this year - at least not so far.

May 11, 2005 Jeremy Powell (OB) vs YG

2005 BBM 2nd Version #624

May 21, 2005 Tsutomu Iwamoto (NH) vs YG

2005 BBM 1st Version #89

Jun 9, 2006 Daisuke Matsuzaka (SL) vs HT

2006 BBM 2nd Version #555

May 28, 2008 Rick Guttormson (SH) vs YB

2008 BBM 1st Version #299

May 29, 2008 Kenji Otonari (SH) vs YB

2008 BBM 2nd Version #658

Jun 15, 2011 Alfredo Figaro (OB) vs YB

2011 BBM 2nd Version #532

Jun 18, 2018 Kenta Uehara (NH) vs HC

2017 BBM Fighters #F10

Card Of The Week June 17

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles manager Masataka Nashida announced a couple days ago that he's stepping down due to the team's poor performance this season.  The team announced that head coach Yosuke Hiraishi would become interim manager for the remainder of the season.

Hiraishi was the Eagles' seventh round pick in the fall 2004 draft, their first one ever.  Prior to being drafted he had attended PL Gakuen High School and Doshisha University before playing for Toyota in the corporate leagues.  He spent seven years in the Eagles organization, getting into only 122 games with the ichi-gun team before retiring after the 2011 season.  He's been a coach for the team ever since.

Here's Hiraishi's rookie card from the 2005 BBM 1st Version set (#246):