Japanese HOF Project

[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.

[nat]

Shinya Miyamoto was Yakult’s shortstop (and sometimes third baseman) from 1995 to 2013. He qualified for Meikyukai as a 41 year old, in 2012, and finished his career with 2133 hits. In total, he posted a slash line of 285/329/350. That should tell you a lot about him. Somewhat surprisingly, for a shortstop with no power, he also had very little speed. For his career he stole 111 bases, which works out to an average of about five or six per year.

Do you remember Placido Polanco? Polanco put up a slash line of 297/343/397, despite playing the first part of his career during MLB’s silly ball era. (Actually, his career almost perfectly overlaps Miyamoto; Polanco played from 1998 to 2013.) Seemingly every year in the 2000s, my fantasy baseball team would manage to be short an infielder, and so I somehow always ended up with Placido Polanco. Polanco could do exactly one thing well (that was relevant to fantasy baseball), he could hit for a good batting average. Other than that – nothing. Zero power, zero speed. Polanco moved around the diamond a bit more than did Miyamoto, but in a lot of ways, these guys are twins. They were active during basically the same time. Miyamoto picked up nine more hits than did Polanco. Polanco’s batting average was a bit higher than was Miyamoto (it took him 200 more games to get those extra nine hits), but batting average was the best part of Miyamoto’s offensive game, just like it was for Polanco. Neither had any power. Miyamoto didn’t even hit doubles, not really. Polanco was a little bit better at drawing walks – he had 30 more of them in 200 fewer games.

Now, focusing on his offense would really be beside the point in a discussion of Miyamoto’s baseball career. This man was a shortstop, back when that meant something. He won nine gold gloves. And while I don’t have fielding statistics for Japan, I assume that a guy who wins nine gold gloves must have been really good out there. Thing is, Polanco was also a really good fielder. He won a pair of gold gloves, and while the years in which he won them were not his best fielding years, he did have some seasons in which he was really sharp with the glove. In 2001 he recorded 23 rField (that’s expected runs saved through fielding) which is better than Ozzie Smith’s second-best season. (In his best season Ozzie saved an incredible 32 runs.) Now, that was far and away Polanco’s best fielding season, but the point is that he was a really sharp fielder.

Miyamoto had notable pedigree in baseball. Yoshio Yoshida was his coach when he was a youngster, and in high school he won at Koshien. (With PL Gakuen, the baseball powerhouse that also featured Kazuhiro Kiyohara.) He did not, however, go straight to the pros after college, playing in the industrial leagues first.

In the late 1990s he was convicted of tax evasion, and was sentenced to ten months in prison along with a lengthy probationary period and a fine of 3.5 million yen.

After retiring he was a baseball commentator for a while, before coaching Yakult. And in 2018 he took over the field manager position with them.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

2002 BBM.

[nat]

I don't have time to write substantive posts at the moment, and don't know when I will. So for now at least I'll post guys in the Meikyukai that are also in the hall of fame. (And so for whom I already did a post.)

Here's Hisashi Yamada. Long-time submarine pitcher for the Braves and 3x MVP winner.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame - Yes

1984 Calbee

[nat]

Kazuhiro Sasaki is one of the few relief pitchers in the Meikyukai. (Off the top of my head, I can't think of any others. But I'm sure that I'm forgetting someone.) I've written about him before.

Sasaki, as you may recall, played for the Mariners from 2000-2003. He was pretty good. (138 ERA+, 3.7 WAR in 220 innings) This card is from the 1998 Calbee set, in 1998 Sasaki was at the height of his powers in Japan.

Word is that 1998 is the first of the really common Calbee sets. And that seems to check out. In my experience 1998-and-later Calbees are almost as common as BBM cards, which means that they're common. Whereas earlier Calbee cards are a hit-or-miss affair. I don't know why that is.

[Exhibitman]

More bromides from the 1949 Seals tour:


O'Doul with Betto and Wakabayashi



Translations would be appreciated.