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Santa was good to me this year, so I have a few more cards to post.

Keishi Suzuki pitched for Kintetsu from 1966 to 1985. In total he pitched 4600 innings and won 317 games. During his career league ERA appears to have averaged around the mid-3s, although with significant variation. I’m just eyeballing this, so that number could be off. But anyway, some years it was down around 3.20 and others up around 4.20. For his career Suzuki had a 3.11 ERA, so he was good for a really long time. 1978 was his best season. He was 30 years old, and posted a 2.02 ERA to go along with 25 wins in just shy of 300 innings, against a league average ERA of 3.68.

Suzuki’s stats look a lot like those of a bunch of American pitchers of the same generation (although his innings pitched totals are more impressive, given the shorter season). If you took his career numbers and shuffled them up with those of Gaylord Perry, Bert Blyleven, Phil Niekro and a handful of other guys, I’m not entirely certain that I could tell you which one is Suzuki. In a way, Nolan Ryan isn’t the worst comp. Suzuki barely cleared 3000 strikeouts, but led the league in K’s eight times (vs. 11 for Ryan). Blyleven is pretty good, but he led the league in strikeouts only once. Maybe I’ll go with Steve Carlton as a compromise. Lefty was a five-time K champ, and, like Suzuki but unlike Ryan and Blyleven, left handed. (Or, well, sort of. Suzuki was naturally right handed but learned, at his father’s behest, to throw from the port side.) Also, the Phillies and the Buffaloes were both pretty bad teams. Albright doesn’t like him as much, comparing him to Jim Bunning and Vida Blue.

As with most strikeout-friendly pitchers, he relied on a mean fastball (at least early in his career). And like most pitchers who rely on a mean fastball, he was homer-prone, giving up 560 for his career. The MLB record is 522. That Jamie Moyer holds the record doesn’t help my claim about fastball pitchers being homer prone, but I’m pretty sure it’s true anyway. Elevating the bat takes time, so a high pitch is going to give you a little extra “effective speed” (if you will). So if you’re relying on your speed it’s a good idea to throw high fastballs, i.e., one’s that batters can get under and hit in the air. This is why Max Scherzer (for example) is such an extreme flyball pitcher. Suzuki was the same kind of guy.

Albright ranks Suzuki was the 79th greatest player of all time. He was a 3x best nine and a 15x all star.

Post playing, Suzuki managed the Buffaloes for a few years. He is “credited” with “helping” Nomo come to the US. Apparently (I’m getting this from Albright who is getting it from “The Meaning of Ichiro” so hopefully nothing is getting lost here) Suzuki favored the traditional intense Japanese training program, and didn’t pay any attention to pitchers’ workloads. Albright reports that he had Nomo throw a 191 pitch game once, which would probably get an American manager burned at the stake. Whiting reports that Suzuki was of the opinion that the best way to cure a hurt arm was to pitch even more. Nomo realized that his arm was getting shredded and wanted to get out. Hence, the Dodgers.

The Suzuki card is from the 1976 Calbee set.