Card Of The Week March 21

I've mentioned in the last couple posts that I've been trying to pick up cards of ikusei players whenever I can lately.  My main reason for this is to try to get as complete a representation of NPB as I can.  Another reason is that it gets interesting to see when players start out as development players and then move onto the 70 man roster.  The Hawks have been very successful at this over the past 10 years with Kodai Senga, Takuya Kai and Ukyo Shuto all having started out as ikusei players.  The Giants had former ikusei players win back to back Rookies Of The Year in the 00's with Tetsuya Yamaguchi and Tetsuya Matsumoto winning in 2007 and 2008.  It's also been a route for teams to bring foreign players in and try them out.  The Carp signed both Xavier Batista and Alejandro Mejia that way and the Hawks did the same with Oscar Colas.

I recently discovered that Aarom Baldris, who had an eight year career in NPB with the Tigers, Buffaloes and Baystars, was originally signed by Hanshin as an ikusei player.  His first Japanese baseball card is from the 2008 BBM Tigers set (#T-071) and shows him as a development player - the three digit number is the giveaway:

2020 Eagles Team Issued Set

The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have published their own baseball card set for at least the last nine years.  That may not sound impressive - after all, almost all the NPB teams issue their own baseball card sets, frequently through their fan clubs.  The difference with the Eagles cards is that they are available via packs and include many of the same features that card sets from BBM and Epoch have - parallel versions, inserts and autographed cards.

I've picked up some of these cards in the past but last year I decided to pick up the entire base set.  Why you may ask?  The base set included all the players for Rakuten (well, mostly anyway) including the ikusei players.  As I mentioned in yesterday's post about last year's Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars set I've been trying to pick up cards of the ikusei players whenever possible - mostly to have my collection represent as full a picture of NPB as possible.  I had thought about trying to get just the ikusei player cards from the set but I wasn't sure how difficult that would be.  I found someone selling the set on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for only 2000 yen and asked Ryan to pick it up for me.

The base set contains 81 cards which are all player cards - unlike BBM's "comprehensive" team sets there are no subsets.  17 of those players are ikusei so the remaining 64 players are from the 70 man roster.  There is no card for manager Hajime Miki or any of the coaches.

The set came out in late April but it's kind of obvious that there weren't any photos taken in spring training last year.  There are no in-game photos for any players who joined the team after the 2019 season ended.  The photos for the players from the 2020 rookie class are all head shots (or what I usually call "mug shots") while the photos for new Japanese players like Hideaki Wakui, Daichi Suzuki and Kazuhisa Makita are from the team's press conferences announcing their acquisition.  And there aren't any cards of new foreign players like Stefan Romero or JT Chargois.  Here's a bunch of example cards:

#01

#46

#67

#16

#42

#69

##06

#76

You'll notice that the cards say "1st Version" on the front.  As far as I can tell there was no 2nd Version last year.  

You can see all the cards from this set (including the inserts and parallels) over at Jambalaya.

2020 Epoch Carp & Buffaloes Rookies & Stars sets

After a couple years of issuing "comprehensive" team sets for a subset of the NPB teams in 2018 and 2019 under the "Rookies & Stars" label Epoch last year changed course a little and instead issued 36 card team sets under that label.  Obviously with only 36 cards the sets are no longer "comprehensive" (i.e. they don't include all the players on the 70 man roster).

I had bought the Lions set last spring on my own but I asked Ryan to pick up the Carp and the Buffaloes sets for me when they came out later.  My reasons for picking them up were different for the two sets.

I wanted the Carp set for two reasons.  Number one I liked how it looked and number two I wanted another card of Masato Morishita as he's been a favorite of mine since I saw him pitch for Meiji University a couple years ago.  Besides Morishita the set contains the rest of the non-ikusei 2020 Carp rookie class along with the bigger name players on the team like Seiya Suzuki, Daichi Ohsera, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Yusuke Nomura and Kris Johnson.  It also includes a card for Emailin Montilla who did not appear in any of the flagship sets from BBM, Calbee or Epoch last year (although he is in the BBM Carp set).  The set does not contain a card for manager Shinji Sasaoka.

I got the Buffaloes set for a different reason.  BBM no longer includes the ikusei players in their team sets so I try to get cards of them whenever I can.  The Buffaloes set included cards for ALL the 2020 Orix rookies, including the ones on the ikusei roster.  That does make the set a little rookie heavy however as 13 of the 36 cards feature one of the 2020 rookies!  Eight of those 13 are ikusei players*.  The rest of the set includes who you'd expect - Masataka Yoshida, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shunta Gotoh, Taisuke Yamaoka and Adam Jones.  Like the Carp set, the Buffaloes does not include a card for the team's manager (which I think was still Norifumi Nishimura when the set came out).

*I should mention that the rookie ikusei players are all also in last year's Rookie Edition set but I wanted cards showing them playing baseball rather than standing around making "guts" poses at their press conference

Both sets suffer from the usual unimaginative player photos although there are a few detours from the standard "pitchers pitching, batters batting, catchers catching" poses.  Here's some sample cards:

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #04

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #31

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #08

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #17

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #22

2020 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #30

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #03

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #32

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #20

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #31

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #35

2020 Epoch Buffaloes Rookies & Stars #34

If you're interested you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya - the Carp cards are here and the Buffaloes cards are here.

2020 Epoch Pacific League Rookies

Also in that big box I got from Ryan recently was last year's Epoch Pacific League Rookies set.  2020 was the third year that Epoch did this set and last year's set looks pretty much like the ones from 2018 and 2019.

The set has 37 cards which is the smallest of the three editions.  That's not because of any decision Epoch made but rather on what the set is for.  It features the entire 2020 rookie class (or at least the non-ikusei portion) for all six Pacific League teams.  I've described it before as essentially half of the Rookie Edition set.

Like the two previous editions, the cards are printed on a heavier stock than normal although this year's set doesn't have the shiny borders the other two did.  I'm still not impressed with the photo selection - pretty much all the usual "pitchers pitching, batters batting and catchers catching" poses although there's one "fielder fielding" shot and one "base runner running" shot.  Here's some example cards:

#04

#12

#14

#34

#22

#29

As usual, you can check out all the cards in the set over at Jambalaya.

SCM Cards From Ryan

One of my on-going projects is attempting to get every baseball related card that was given away in issues of Sports Card Magazine (SCM).  Or at least get every baseball related card that was not simply a promo for a BBM set.  I haven't put together an actual want list or anything and I haven't quite determined all the cards that aren't promos so the project is kind of vague right now.  However, a while back I saw someone selling a bunch of SCM cards on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for about 100 yen apiece so I asked Ryan to pick them up for me.  It was 29 auctions in all so I'm very grateful to Ryan for being willing to bid on all of them for me.  Here are all the cards in chronological order with minimal comment from me:

I didn't realize until I got it that this Kazuyoshi Tatsunami card was actually a promo for the 1997 BBM Dragons set.

This 1998 card shows a cover of Shukan (Weekly) Baseball from October 9th, 1961 with Hiroshi Gondoh and Shigeo Nagashima.

BBM didn't start numbering the SCM cards until 1999 so this card of Koji Akiyama celebrating his MVP award from the 1999 Nippon Series is the first of these cards to have a number.

1999 SCM #6

2003 SCM #23

2003 SCM #25

2003 SCM #30

2003 SCM #31

The back of this 2004 card of Daisuke Matsuzaka shows him holding a bat for some reason.

2004 SCM #35

2004 SCM #35

2004 SCM #42

2005 SCM #44

2005 SCM #45

2005 SCM #46

2005 SCM #54

I thought it was interesting that this 2005 card of Norichika Aoki says that the photos on it were selected by Aoki.

2005 SCM #55

2005 SCM #55

2005 SCM #60

These two 2006 cards feature each league's batting monthly MVPs for May and June of 2006.  The May winners are on the fronts while the June winners are on the backs.

2006 SCM #75

2006 SCM #75

2006 SCM #76

2006 SCM #76

2006 SCM #77

2006 SCM #78

2006 SCM #79

2007 SCM #83

2007 SCM #92

2008 SCM #106

2008 SCM #107

2009 SCM #120

2009 SCM #121

2009 SCM #122

2009 SCM #123