Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

As far as anybody knows, no cards of Sawamura were ever made, so I'm not counting him. I'm also not counting guys who only played pre-war. Some of those guys have cards (others don't) but they're very rare and expensive. When I set out on this project I didn't know anything about Japanese cards and wasn't really up for tracking down rare and expensive ones, so while I'd like to get them, I didn't include them on the list. I've also included some but not all of the managers. Everyone who is in the hall as a manager, and who also had a long and successful career as a player (think the Japanese version of Joe Torre) is included, but only some of the managers who didn't have much of a pro career themselves are included. Obviously there is an element of arbitrariness to the parameters of my project.

Anyways, as to your question Sean:

As of yesterday the list of missing players is down to two. Sotokoba was one of the missing guys, and I got a letter from a certain friend in Japan () with a Sotokoba card in it. Many thanks. The other two players are Sadao Kondo and Mutsuo Minagawa. But I've got a lead on both of them, so I'm going to be done pretty soon.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

As of yesterday the list of missing players is down to two. Sotokoba was one of the missing guys, and I got a letter from a certain friend in Japan () with a Sotokoba card in it. Many thanks. The other two players are Sadao Kondo and Mutsuo Minagawa. But I've got a lead on both of them, so I'm going to be done pretty soon.

Oh awesome, glad they arrived!!!

And I feel kind of stupid asking that question forgetting that one of the ones you needed was the card I had just sent you!

[nat]

Yoshiro Sotokoba pitched for the Carp from 1965 to 1979. Some of those were some pretty abbreviated seasons though. His full-time work was just 1968 to 1976. Quite short for a hall of famer. In total he logged about 2400 innings with a 2.88 ERA. His best season was almost certainly his first as a full-time pitcher. In 1968 he threw 302 innings and posted a 1.93 ERA (this figure led the league). Historically the Carp have been a bad team, and it shows in the win/loss records of their pitchers. Including Sotokoba. For his career he’s got a 131-138 record. To their credit, the Japanese voters didn’t let the losing record discourage them from inducting him into the hall of fame. But that a pitcher with a sub-3 ERA for his career has a losing record really tells you something about his team. (They went 25 years without a pennant. Not Cubs territory exactly, but pretty rough, especially considering the fact that the league is smaller.)

I wonder what the American electorate would do with an otherwise-qualified hall of fame candidate who had a losing record? It’s hard to know, since there’s never been such a creature. They did give Felix Hernandez a Cy Young award despite having only 13 wins. But he did, at least, have a winning record.

Anyways, as was long common for Japanese pitchers, Sotokoba did a lot of pitching in relief in between his starts. He finished 86 games (Japan seems not to have recognized saves as a statistic until 1974, so we don’t really know what kind of games he was finishing), and in total seems to have made about 120 relief appearances.

Sotokoba’s biggest claim to fame is his no hitters. In fact, his very first win was a no hitter. Three years later (so 1968), he threw a perfect game against the Whales. In 1970 he tossed his third and final no hitter (over the Giants). This feat equaled Eiji Sawamura’s record. There have been 93 no hitters in Japan’s history (regular season only, and counting combined no hitters), so Sotokoba is responsible for something in the neighborhood of 4% of them.

Japan doesn’t have many pitchers that have thrown multiple no hitters. Hiroshi Nakao threw two of them, so did Hideo Fujimoto, Juzo Sanada, Masaichi Kaneda, and Keishi Suzuki. Everyone else who has thrown a no hitter managed only one. (source)

Although I think that 1968 was his best season, it was in 1975, toward the end of his career, that Sotokoba won the Sawamura award. He pitched a tremendous number of innings, and so led the league in most of the counting stats. The Carp were, unusually for them, also good this year. They made a very unusual appearance in the Japan Series, but lost to the Braves.

Meikyukai – No : Hall of Fame – Yes

One down, two to go.

1976 Calbee.

[nat]

This is post #2 about Tsuneo Horiuchi. He was the Giants ace from the mid 1960s. Many Japanese pitchers crumple under frankly insane workloads. Horiuchi’s workload was more reasonable than many (no 400 inning seasons for instance), but he was pitching full-time while he was still just 18, and was done as a full-time starter after his age 30 season. He finished with 203 wins, and qualified for the Meikyukai with his 200th win in 1980.

Horiuchi won the 1966 and 1972 Sawamura awards. (Baseball-reference says that he also won in 1974, but that appears to be an error.) In 72 he was also the MVP. In 1966 he was a young phenom, going 16-2 with a 1.39 ERA in 181 innings pitched as an 18 year old. His second win may not have been quite as exciting, but it was probably a more valuable season. He had a record of 26-9 to go with a 2.91 ERA in 312 innings.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of fame: Yes

1976 Calbee

[nat]

Shinnosuke Abe is the Giants’ first baseman. He’s been with them since 2001 when he broke in as a 22 year old catcher. Most of his career has been spent behind the plate, but he’s getting older and has transitioned to first in the past few years. And he’s still good. This season he’s got a 297/406/465 batting line. That would be a lot more impressive if he was still a catcher, but still, every one of those figures is considerably better than average. Abe’s best season, well, it’s hard to say. In 2010 he hit 281/368/608 with 44 home runs. One hell of a line for a catcher. On the other hand, his 2012 and 2013 seasons were also excellent and were pretty much identical, at least as far as total batting value is concerned. 340/429/565 in 2012, 296/427/564 in 2013. Of course the batting average in 2012 was a lot higher, and since he’s never been a 340 kind of hitter before I’m guessing that he got lucky with some balls in play. Anyway, he made up for it the following season with an improved batting eye. Upon reflection, the 2012/2013 seasons were probably better than 2010. A point of on base percentage is worth more, in terms of expected runs, than is a point in slugging percentage, but I’m certainly not going to complain about a catcher who slugs 600. That 2012 season earned him a nearly unanimous MVP award.

Abe qualified for the Meikyukai in 2017, and while his playing time has decreased the past couple years, he still got into 93 games this year. He joked that although many people have 2000 hits, he’s so slow that no one in the Meikyukai has fewer infield hits than he does.

It turns out that Abe’s hit total is complete at 2131, as is his home run total, 405. Last Wednesday he announced that this would be his final season. Which means that yesterday’s game was his final regular season game with the Giants.

Abe was a 9x best-nine and 4x gold glove winner. It’s often hard to find comparable American players, but in Abe’s case it’s easy, at least if you ignore the gold gloves. This guy is Mike Piazza.

Here’s a story about Abe’s final game.

“I like baseball more than anyone” he said during his retirement press conference.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Eventually

The card is from the 2013 BBM set.

[nat]

This is my second post about Morimichi Takagi. (Here’s number one.)

Takagi qualified for the Meikyukai in 1978. He has a total of 2274 hits, all of them with the Dragons. I don’t know what their record is, but I’m guessing that’s up there. While he was a 7x best nine, he was oddly named to the all-star team only four times. Maybe he doesn’t like cold weather and so got better as the season progressed?

As a freshman in high school Takagi was a pitcher, but Shigeo Nagashima – then at Rikkyu University – was coaching high school players, and suggested to his manager that Takagi be converted to an infielder. His high school team would go on to play in Koshien, and made it to the final round in 1959, but ended up losing the tournament.

In 1968 he was hit in the face with a pitch by Tsuneo Horiuchi (see two posts above this one) and was seriously injured. His batting average dropped considerably thereafter, through what should have been his peak seasons. He had been hitting 290-300, but settled in around 230-250 for the next several seasons. He retired in 1980, due to declining vision. (No word on whether it was related to the beaning.)

In addition to being a great offensive force, Takagi was known for his slick fielding. He holds Japan’s record for range factor at 2B. Range factor is certainly a crude tool, and I wouldn’t want to dub someone a great fielder based solely on their range factor. But despite being crude, if you’ve got limited information (like I’ve got about Japanese fielding), it’s not bad exactly. Given that he’s the all-time leader, I’m confident at least in saying that he was a good defensive second baseman.

Meikyukai – Yes : Hall of Fame – Yes

1976 Calbee.

[seanofjapan]

Nice card

Takagi also managed the Dragons a few years ago, he took over from Hiromitsu Ochiai so had pretty big shoes to fill.