Japanese HOF Project

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Thanks for the info Sean! Great to have someone around who actually recognizes the stadium. And A's batters think that they have it bad with foul territory!

I've been posting mostly menkos and bromides (with a few Calbees and BBMs thrown in); today I've got my first candy card.

Kihachi Enomoto was a first baseman who played for the Orions until his very last season. Between 1955 and 1972 he logged 9000 plate appearances with a batting average just under 300. He had good-but-not-great power. Scouts would have said that his real advantage is with his hit tool. Frequently he hit above .300, topping out at .351 in 1966, and he walked quite a bit more than he struck out. Indeed, Enomoto was extremely good at not striking out. Maybe not Joe Sewell good, but, you know, Yogi Berra good. From his statistical profile I’m imagining a player with a really good batting eye who hits line drives and uses the whole field. Probably not a pull hitter. The 24 homers that he hit in 1966 were the most he had in a single season, and represent about 10% of his career output.

Let’s look at that 1966 season for a minute. He hit 351/434/571 to go with 81 runs, 24 HR, 74 RBI and 14 steals, in 133 games. The league as a whole hit 238/290/358. Let’s translate his performance into the 2018 American League…

*crunches some numbers*

That would give us a batting line of 367 AVG / 476 OBP / 663 SLG and 121 runs, 42 HR, and 110 RBI. The rate stats would all have led the league. He would have placed 3rd in runs, 3rd in home runs, and 3rd in RBI. The difference between his rate stats and his run and RBI totals is probably due to his teammates - Yamauchi was long gone by this point and the Orions weren't any good. They finished in the middle of the pack in 1966, a bit below .500. Give him a better supporting cast and he’s probably got much better R and RBI figures. Now sure, that’s his best season, but anyone who can put up a season like that is a beast.

He also struck out only 20 times that season. (Actual figure, not adjusted to 2018 AL.)

Parenthetical remark that I’m not going to actually put in parentheses: a few grains of salt may be necessary when looking at those numbers. Jim Allen has done some really nice work showing that the mean standard deviation across a bunch of measures (win%, batting average, etc.) have gone down consistently over time. In short, dominant performances from early decades of Japanese ball shouldn’t be as surprising as in more recent decades. Now, 1966 wasn’t early exactly, but it’s not recent either.
/Parenthetical remark

His greatness was recognized at the time. He was a 9x best nine and 12x all star. On the other hand, he never did win an MVP award. Katsuya Nomura won in 1966. There were two reasons for this, one respectable, the other less so. Nomura, while not being as strong of an offensive force, was a catcher rather than a first baseman. And he also played for the first place Nankai Hawks as opposed to the fourth place Tokyo Orions. I guess that I would have voted for Nomura as well, given their positional differences, but Japan’s tradition of giving the MVP award to players from winning teams basically meant that Enomoto didn’t have a chance. Albright calls him the 17th greatest Japanese player, and 4th greatest first baseman. Great though he was, it’s hard to argue that point. Oh, Ochiai, and Kawakami put up some stiff competition.

Enomoto played against the Dodgers during their 1956 tour of Japan. He tied the score in an Oct. 26th game, driving in Yasumitsu Toyoda with a single off of reliever Don Bessent. The game was subsequently called for darkness with the score tied at 3. Rookie or not, Brooklyn should have left Drysdale in.

Like Hiramatsu Ochiai, but no one else, Enomoto is qualified for the meikyukai but not a member. (Enomoto’s 2000th hit came curtesy of Keishi Suzuki, the player featured in my last post.) He is, of course, a member of the hall of fame, but that was a near thing. He received exactly the number of votes that he needed for election. Not one vote to spare.

This is my first caramel card. It’s from the JF2 set. It’s tiny and made of paper. Granted it’s a durable and glossy paper, but it’s definitely not card stock. I wonder how the caramels were packaged? If they were individually wrapped and kind of large (for caramels not baseball cards) I could see this being an insert with a single piece of candy.