Japanese HOF Project

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Hiromitsu Kadota was a big immobile slugger, mostly playing for the Nankai Hawks, from 1970 to 1992. He was still slugging in excess of .600 after he turned 40. Clearly a middle-of-the-order type (he cleared 100 RBIs several times, but never made it to 100 runs), Kadota tallied 567 home runs, to go with 2566 hits and a career 289/379/529 slash line. Until 1977 he was an outfielder, but he spent basically the last 15 years of his career as a designated hitter.

Usually hitters perform less-well as DHs than they do when they are playing the field. This has been common knowledge in Sabrmetric circles for a while now. Michael Lichtman found, using data from 1998-2012, that DHs lose about 14 points of wOBA relative to their performance when they’re not DHing. If you’re not familiar with it, wOBA takes the weighted run-value of a player’s batting events (singles, walks, home runs, and so on), divides it by opportunities (basically plate appearances, but with adjustments for sac bunts and the like), and puts it on a scale that looks like what you’d find for OBP. 14 points isn’t a huge difference exactly, but it is pretty significant. For whatever reason (Lichtman suggests that DHs don’t have their heads in the game to the same extent that regular position players do), players hit noticeably worse when they’re DHing. Kadota seems to have been an exception to this general trend. After becoming a full-time DH, he became a truly great hitter, significantly improving on his (already pretty good) production as an outfielder. (Although Kadota might have just been ahead of his time. Some recent research – which is unfortunately behind a paywall at Baseball Prospectus – suggests that the “DH penalty” might not be a thing anymore.)

What Kadota is most famous for is his performance as an old player. He is the oldest MVP in Japanese history – taking the title in 1988 at the age of 40. In addition he is the oldest player to lead the league in RBIs, toping the league with 93 as a 41 year old. As a great player who didn’t really age, Kadota predictable ranks high on Japan’s all-time leader boards. He’s third in career home runs, and top ten in most other offensive categories. In total he was selected to seven best-nines, and was a 14x all-star. Albright regards him as the 16th greatest player in Japanese history.

Here’s some footage of Kadota hitting home runs.

My card is from the 1984 Calbee set.