Japanese HOF Project

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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.