Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

This is my second post about Choji Murata. (Here’s the first.) I thought I’d take what appears to be his best season (1976) and adjust it to fit the 2019 AL context, to give us a better idea of what he was up to.

In 1976 Murata had a 1.82 ERA, to go with 21 wins and 202 strike outs, in 257 innings pitched. Murata led the league in ERA, IP, and K’s, but did not win the Sawamura award. (The Sawamura award went to Kojiro Ikegaya of the Carp.) He was second in wins.

That year the Pacific League managed a 3.34 ERA and 0.48 K/IP. I don’t know how to get league-wide data for performance as a starter, so I really can’t normalize wins. But I can approximate it with innings pitched. Here's the plan: I'm going to adjust his number of starts for the shorter schedule, and then multiply that number by the average innings per start in the 2019 American League. That will get something like a translation of his innings pitched into the 2019 AL context. If he was pitching more/less than the league average innings per appearance, this figure will be off. I'm going to assume that relief appearances are 1-inning long.

Now, the 2019 AL has an ERA of 4.60 and a K rate of .96 per inning. (Yikes! That’s a lot of strike outs!) Starting pitchers pitch an average of 5.23 innings per start. Maybe bump it up to 5.5 due to openers pulling down the average.

Murata made 24 starts in a season 80% as long as MLB’s. So let’s give him 29 starts. He also made 22 relief appearances, with the season-length adjustment that becomes 26. Call those relief appearances one inning each (just a wild guess on that one). That comes out to an adjusted 186 innings. That’s maybe a bit on the light side, but not unreasonable for a contemporary starter. Blake Snell won the Cy Young award last year with fewer innings pitched than that.

Murata was striking out batters at a rate 40% better than league average. Adjusted to the 2019 AL that comes out to 1.3 K’s per inning, which is extremely good. It’s just about what Justin Verlander does. Over 186 innings that would give him 250 Ks. If you adjust his ERA for the 2019 AL context, you end up with 2.51. There isn’t any way to adjust wins, so here’s what Murata’s 1976 looks like if it happens in the 2019 American League:

186 innings pitched, 250 strikeouts (12 K/9), and a 2.51 ERA.

That ERA would lead the league (by a little bit). The K figures are good but not league leading. The innings pitched are a bit light for a full season, but not very low. He in fact pitched far more innings than that, but that has to do with differences in pitcher usage between the 1976 Pacific League and the 2019 American League. He actually pitched 18 complete games that year, adjusted for context and that becomes, eh, like, 1 or 2. Basically nobody pitches complete games anymore, or even very deep into games. The longer schedule isn’t enough to make up for the reduced workloads. (There’s also the possibility that his relief outings were longer than one inning each.)

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: Yes

These cards are mid-80s Calbee cards. I bought them in a lot, it’s not like I was all like “I already have one boring headshot of Choji Murata, surely need to buy another”.

[nat]

Takao Kajimoto is a hall of famer and Meikyukai member who pitched for the Braves. He was featured in one on the earliest posts in this thread (which weren’t very high quality) so I’ll try to do better here.

Kajimoto pitched from 1954 to 1973, compiling a record of 254-255 (that’s right, a losing record). I wonder if that’s the highest number of wins for a pitcher with a losing record? My guess would be “yes”. Wikipedia (Japanese version) says that it is the highest total for anyone to have never led the league in wins, which also sounds plausible. Although he was a 12x all-star, he was selected for just a single best-nine team.

Kajimoto’s father died when he was in middle school, and he was raised by his mother alone thereafter. He was a sensation as a rookie, signing directly out of high school with a 93 mph fastball.

With a rotation led by Kajimoto and Tetsuya Yoneda, Hankyu has something of a golden age in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, they ran into the buzz saw of the V9 Giants, and didn’t manage to win the Japan Series. For a while the Dodgers did a lot of things with various Japanese teams, and in the late 1950s they went to Japan to play against an all-star team. This could have turned out better for Kajimoto. He started the Oct. 31st, 1956 game, and Gino Cimoli hit a line drive that bounced off of Kajimoto’s shoulder (ouch!) and went for a triple.

After he retired Kajimoto spent many years as a coach. His advice to (at least some of his pitchers) was… peculiar. Apparently he recommended drinking before appearing in a game, on the grounds that it worked for him. There’s a reason that anecdotes don’t really count as evidence. #obviouslybadideas.

Kajimoto still holds the record for consecutive batters struck out, at nine. His pitch of choice was something that Google Translate’s version of Kajimoto’s Japanese Wikipedia page is calling a ‘palm ball’, which I gather is a kind of change up. A good change up is a nice thing to have if you can pair it was a blazing fastball. (Or, well, blazing in context. No one is going to be impressed with a 93mph fastball anymore.)

Meikyukai – Yes (he was one of the founding members) : Hall of Fame – Yes

My card is from the JCM 43a set. It’s one of a bunch of almost indistinguishable sets released between c. 1958 and 1960.

[nat]

Takuro Ishii played baseball (mostly SS) for 24 seasons, spending most of the time with the same franchise (albeit carrying over through the change from the Taiyo Whales to the Yokohama Bay Stars). His last few years were spent with Hiroshima. Ishii had no power at all, averaging four home runs per year for his career. On the other hand, he was pretty fast, stealing 20-40 bases a year for a long time. Basically what you expect from a shortstop. He played from 1989 to 2012, and collected 2432 hits (this figure is 14th all-time). His 2000th hit came in 2006, and the last few years of his career he was playing part-time. In total he put up a 282/356/372 line. He never was a dangerous hitter exactly, but if you’re playing a good shortstop, that will do.

Curiously, Ishii started his career as a pitcher. He broke in as an 18 year old with the Whales and pitched 30 innings to a 3.56 ERA. His pitching career would be short, however, a total of 49 innings spread over three seasons. By 1993 he was a regular third baseman. (It would be a couple years before he moved to short.) But his start as a pitcher didn’t exactly go smoothly either. He was undrafted out of high school, and didn’t make a pro team until he won a spot at a tryout with the Whales.

Sacrifice hits seem to have been a specialty of his. In both 1993 and 1994 he had 39 of them, which sounds like a very large number to me. The MLB record is 67 by Ray Chapman in 1917. Pretty much all of the top MLB seasons in sac hits are from the deadball era. There are a couple high figures from the early 1920s (old habits die hard). The top figure from after the early 20s is Pie Traynor’s 42 in 1928. Ishii’s 39 would tie him for 50th in MLB history, and remember he did that twice in consecutive seasons. I’m guessing third baseman played pretty far in when they saw him come up to bat.

Although Ishii was fast, he was also reckless, leading the league in times caught stealing during a bunch of seasons.

In total, over his 24 seasons he made six all-star teams and five best-nines. In addition he won four gold gloves awards. Post retirement, he has coached for the Carp, and is currently a coach with the Swallows.

As for a comparable American player: I can’t help but pick Omar Vizquel. They played the same position, they both started their careers in 1989 and retired in 2012, and they both amassed a whole bunch of hits. Vizquel won more gold gloves, but most of those he won on reputation. With the exception of an anomalous 1999, his defensive stats from 1994 to 2001 (all years in which he won the GG) were nothing special. (When he actually was a good fielder was right at the beginning of his career, but he didn’t have the reputation yet and so didn’t win the award.) On the whole, they’re quite similar players.

The Bay Stars released him after something like 20 years. Rather than retire, he signed with the Carp. About this he said:

"There really weren't many [offers]. It was in fact very tough. But in the end it wasn't about money. Rather, I wanted to keep going, I wanted a fresh start. Frankly speaking, baseball is fun."

I like that sentiment.


The card is from the 1993 BBM set.

[Northviewcats]

Here are some 1958 JCM23 Playing Card Back cards that I picked up. Any help identifying the players is appreciated.

Best regards,

Joe

[nat]

Hi Joe,

You've got the set wrong. Those aren't JCM 23 they're JGA 21. They were produced by the Shonen Magazine. The year on the set is 1961.

The ace of spades is Kazuto Tsuruoka (aka Yamamoto). He was briefly a very good player, and is in the hall of fame for his work as a manager of the Nankai Hawks.

The queen of spades is Tadashi Sugiura, a hall of fame pitcher.

Jack of diamonds is Futushi Nakanishi, a hall of famer (played 3B). He was superbly great when he was young (and married his manager's daughter) but tailed off towards the end of his career. He played for the Lions.

Six of diamonds is Noboru Akiyama. He was a hall of fame pitcher for the Taiyo Whales. He had his moments, but on the whole - largely due to a short career - he's one of the weaker members of the hall of fame.

[nat]

Haruyasu Nakajima was a star in the early days of Japanese pro ball. He played with the Giants (through several incarnations) from 1936 through 1949, and spent the last couple years of his career with Taiyo. An outfielder, he posted a career line of 270/324/393, managing 897 hits, 57 home runs, and 103 stolen bases over the course of his career. Remember that in early Japanese baseball, very few runs were scored. His best season was probably the fall season of 1938. The league as a whole hit 219/319/293. Only 110 home runs were hit in the whole league that season, 22 of them by the Kyojin. Get this: in that league, Nakajima hit 361/428/626, and bashed out ten home runs. That’s completely nuts, and it was Japan’s first triple crown. He hit almost 50% of his team’s home runs that year, and, what, like, 9% of the home runs in the entire league. (You actually just couldn’t do this anymore. To do that in the 2019 American League – to this point in the season – you would need to hit 286 home runs.) Nakajima’s slugging percentage that season was more than double the league average. I decided to check out Babe Ruth real quick. In 1918 (so this is still during the deadball era) he slugged 555 against a league average of 322. In 1919 he slugged 657 and the league mark was 359. Neither of those seasons matched Nakajima’s feat. His best season – as far as raw slugging percentage goes – was 1920, when he slugged 847 and the league managed 387. Okay, so Ruth did manage to double the league mark for slugging percentage. But that’s what we need to compare Nakajima’s fall 1938 season to: perhaps the best season of Babe Ruth’s career. (By WAR Ruth’s best season is 1923, but that’s being propped up by an anomalous 19 runs saved in the field.) As you might have surmised, power was Nakajima’s calling card. In fact, he hit the first home run in Giants’ history (off of Tadashi Wakabayashi).

Nakajima didn’t have the consistency that Ruth did, but at his best he was Ruthian in his performance. Japan didn’t go to a single season each year (as opposed to split between fall and spring seasons) until 1940, when Nakajima was 30 years old. His batting average and on-base percentage were better than average that year, but his slugging percentage was still excellent, about 50% higher than average. That’s quite a drop-off from his Ruthian heights, but he was still hitting roughly like (this year’s version of) George Springer.

Then the war came calling. His 1943 season was abbreviated, whether that was due to injury or enlistment I don’t know. But he lost his entire 1944 and 1945 seasons to the war. When he came back he was 36 years old, and not at the top of his game anymore. In 1946 he was a little below average in the on-base department, and a little above average in the slugging department. My guess (and this is only a guess) as to what happened: he found that he was old and out of practice, and started selling out for power. Guessing on fastballs and trying to pull things. That would explain a precipitous drop in BA/OBP and a still-healthy SLG.

By 1947 he was genuinely bad, but at this point he had been relegated to a part-time role anyhow, probably at his own choosing, since he took over as manager of the Giants in 1946. Nakajima’s managerial career was brief, 1943 with the Giants, continuing after the war through 47. They got a slow start to the season and he was relieved of his duties, only to take the top spot again in 1949. But that didn’t last. He managed a partial season in 1949, and then another partial season with the Whales in 1951. Under Nakajima’s leadership the Giants were good and the Whales were not. About what you expect. I don’t know about his other managerial abilities, but he seems to have been a good judge of talent. Tetsuharu Kawakami was originally moved from pitcher to first base at his suggestion, and he, together with Shigeru Mizuhara, scouted Takahiko Bessho for the Giants. (They didn't manage to sign him - he went to Nankai instead.)

The professional part of Nakajima’s career was in fact only the fourth act of his life in baseball. In 1928 he led his high school team to victory at Koshien. Afterwards he starred at Waseda, playing for one of Japan’s most storied university baseball teams. At the time, baseball at the Big Six universities was the highest caliber baseball in Japan. After he graduated he played in the industrial leagues (which pre-date genuinely professional baseball in Japan). He then joined the Giants as soon as that was an option.

The other player on the card is Kikuji Hirayama. He’s the one throwing on the left, Nakajima is standing on the right. Hirayama is not in the hall of fame, but was a pretty good outfielder in his own right, playing for the Giants from 1937 to 1949, and then leaving with Nakajima for the Whales. There’s a nice write-up about him on Noburo Aota’s Fan Notes.

Meikyukai – No : Hall of Fame – Yes

The card is an uncatalogued bromide. The back has the players’ names, but nothing else. (Unless, that is, you count damage due to being removed from a scrap book.) The condition of this card is obviously terrible, and I’d be happy to upgrade it at some point. Since both players featured left the Giants after 1949, this card must be a late 40s issue.

Nakajima is not a meikyukai member (his disqualification is over determined, he has neither enough hits nor the right birthday), but he is in the hall of fame. In fact, he was the third player ever elected. This card does, therefore, contribute to my hall of fame project. I just need three more cards at this point.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

This card does, therefore, contribute to my hall of fame project. I just need three more cards at this point.

Wow, getting that close!

I can guess that Eiji Sawamura would be one of the three, who are the other two?