Japanese HOF Project

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Makoto Matsubara was mostly a first baseman (also sometimes a third baseman) who played 1962 to 1980 with Taiyo, and a few games in 1981 with the Giants. He seems to have originally been a catcher, and appeared in at least one game at every infield position, and also spent 49 games in the outfield. For his career he totaled 2095 hits, 331 home runs, and a 276/330/465 line. On the face of it those numbers don’t seem too good, but he was playing a relatively low-offense league. In context, he was a star. Matsubara made 11 all-star teams, but having to compete with Oh and Nagashima kept him out of the best nine.

He had the misfortune of spending most of his career with the Whales. They were to the Central League as the St. Louis Browns were to the American League. They managed a couple second-place finishes, but a plurality of the seasons in which he played for them they finished fifth. In his one season with the Giants, however, they won the Japan Series (of course).

Since retirement Matsubara has been active with the Meikyukai. In particular, he been working with the Meikyukai to popularize baseball around southeast Asia. As of 2017 he was working with local teams in Malaysia.

And here’s a tumblr page with a whole bunch of Mastubara cards on it.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1976 Calbee. It’s from a “then-and-now” style subset.

[nat]

Here's my original post about Kadota.

Kadota was an outfielder for the first half of his career, and a DH for the second half. He played for Nankai from 1970 to 1988, Orix in 89 and 90, and Daiei in 91 and 92. He's weird in a bunch of ways. Or, rather, he's weird in that he seems to be impervious to the laws of aging, and this manifests itself in a bunch of ways.

He was good as a young man. And good (perhaps even better, although eyeballing the adjustments necessary to account for changing context is hard) when he was an old man. And good even as a very old man. He had an above average OPS at the age of 44.

Consistency is really valuable. Hank Aaron was a great player, but what made him a GREAT player is that he never had an off year. (Cf. also Mike Trout) Kadota was the same way.

I was trying to think of a comparable American player, but there aren't any good fits. He's got Aaron's consistency. And he was a huge slugger. But Aaron played a good right field, whereas Kadota was a DH. But there aren't any American DHs, or even first basemen, that, in context, hit like Kadota did. If you adjust his HR totals for differences in the length of the American vs. Japanese season, you end up with 680. There are no good matches up that high in the US. Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth were better fielders. Rodriguez was an infielder. Mays was a much better fielder. Pujols doesn't have the consistency, neither does Sosa. Thome, although also a slugging DH, wasn't the same kind of slugging DH. Thome and Kadota played in just about the same number of games in their respective careers, but Thome's walk and HR totals are far higher. Kadota put the ball in play a lot more than he did. Frank Thomas had a better batting eye. David Ortiz isn't too bad, although Kadota hit more home runs in fewer games than did Ortiz.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Yes

Two cards today. One is from 1987 Calbee, the other is 1988.

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Norihiro Komada played 1B/OF for the Giants and Bay Stars from 1983 to 2000. He got a slow start – looks to have been mostly a pinch hitter for his first few seasons, but was a starter at 24 and thereafter missed very few games. Offensively he had good but rarely great power, decent on base skills, and no speed. Although he was a six-time all-star, 1x best-nine, and 10x gold glove winner, and qualified for the Meikyukai, the highlight of his career was probably his very first at bat. He hit a grand slam on April 10, 1983, on his first trip to the plate. The first Japanese player to accomplish that feat.

Komada was drafted out of high school, and although he hit .490 in high school, he was selected by the Giants as a pitcher. That didn’t last. Motoshi Fujita, managing the Giants at the time, moved him to first base before he saw any big league action on the mound.

He left the Giants after 1993 in order to make room for Hiromitsu Ochiai, who was to take over at first base. During the 1980s the Lions were the dominant team in Japan, but Komada managed to win the Japan Series with Yomiuri once. After heading to the Bay Stars, he got another chance, taking home the championship in 1998. The Bay Stars were known as the “machine gun offense” because of the regularity with which they delivered hits. The machine gun offense was led by second baseman Bobby Rose, who hit 325 with 19 home runs. Komada, despite being the first baseman, was one of the worst-hitting regulars on the team.

If you just take his offense, Komada looks like a minor star. Somebody like Shawn Green. But the ten gold gloves tell a different story. If his defense really was that good, his American counterpart is more like Keith Hernandez.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1998 Calbee

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It’s easy to think of the Meikyukai’s 2000 hit qualification as analogous to the MLB 3000 hit club. But it’s not. The seasons are much closer in length than that. To get something analogous the qualification for the Meikyukai would need to be closer to 2400 hits. And if it was, a LOT of the players in the Meikyukai would not qualify.

Case in point: Hiromasa Arai. He hung on through a truly dreadful age 40 season to eclipse the 2000 hit mark, and retired at the end of the year. Plenty of other guys retired basically immediately after reaching 2000, but their teams were willing to let them continue to chase it even if they eat up an otherwise valuable roster spot. If the line were 2400 obviously there would still be guys doing this, but there would be a lot less of it, and the players doing it would generally be of a higher quality.

Anyways, Arai spent 18 seasons playing ichi-gun ball in Japan. From 1975 to 1985 he was with Nankai, and the balance of his career with Kintetsu. That’s the Hawks and the Buffaloes. Arai was an outfielder with basically no power and relatively little speed. He topped ten homers in a season twice, and while he often got into double digits in steals, that’s about all that you can say WRT his speed. That said, he was a good player. But his game was putting the ball where fielders can’t reach it. Basically all of his offensive value was tied to his batting average. He did walk more than he struck out, but he didn’t really do much of either. I’m imaging a guy with amazing bat control, but who never saw a pitch that he didn’t like. His best season came, surprisingly, as a 35 year old. He posted an on base percentage that was well above average, to go along with a healthy slugging percentage. But, as usual, both were driven by his batting average, in this case a career-high 366. For his career Arai sported a 291/342/395 batting line.

He was a product of the baseball powerhouse high school PL Gakuen, but did not go pro immediately. The Buffaloes selected him in the ninth round of the draft out of high school, but he was apparently not well thought of at the time (he says they didn’t even send a scout out to see him). So instead of signing he attended Hosei University and later joined the Hawks. By my count he was selected to the best nine three times, but never won an MVP award. The Buffaloes went to the Japan Series in 1989 (his only chance at a flag). And while the Buffaloes lost the Series, the Fighting Spirit Award (basically the MVP for the losing team) went to Arai.

Since retiring Arai has spent some time coaching, and has also been doing goodwill work with the Meikyukai. As of 2013 he was helping develop a baseball program in Cambodia. Two of his daughters won a Miss Japan beauty contest. One of them has athletic ambitions – she was doing something with tennis in Cambodia, and more recently worked with something called the Three Hearts Foundation to help build the popularity of baseball in Singapore. Arai and Hideo Nomo also took part in the Singaporean outreach program. Currently he is a coach with SoftBank.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: No

1990 Calbee

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I don't have the time to do a proper write-up for anybody at the moment, even though I've got a bunch of new cards that need them. But I also don't want to leave this thread dormant for too long, so I'll show off a new card that doesn't need an accompanying biography.

Sean needed a copy of the Takagi card from the "Monsters and Robots" set, so I sent my copy to him and got this one in return. It's a Takagi from the 1975 Pepsi menko set. I like it because it's seriously thick, this card is like a hockey puck. A lot of menko sets are really menko sets in name only - they're actually too thin to flip over. Not this guy.

Other posts on Takagi here and here.

[seanofjapan]

Yeah, that Takagi is rock solid alright!

I really like that set.

I got the Monsters and Robots one you sent me, thanks a lot!

[nat]

I’m way behind in keeping this thread updated. Two reasons. Mostly, I’ve got lots of deadlines pressing and really shouldn’t be spending time writing about Japanese baseball. (This post included…) And, secondly, I’ve been working on other parts of my collection lately. But anyways, I’ve got a bunch of cards on-hand that need a write-up, including today’s featured player.

Just like the American hall, there are two doors to the Japanese hall. The front door is induction via the Player’s Division. The committee responsible for this group has as its purview recently retired players. The back door is induction via the Expert’s Division vote; players retired for at least 21 years are eligible. This past year no one was elected on the Player’s Division ballot, although Shingo Takatsu fell just short at 73%. Meanwhile, Koichi “home run artist” Tabuchi was named on 80% of the Expert’s Division ballots (voted on by living hall of famers), and therefore elected to the hall of fame. He was the only player selected. (The Japanese hall also elects a large number of executives and other non-players.) The big problem with collecting the hall of fame is that it’s always getting larger. So I expect that I’ll be picking up a Japanese card or two each year.

Tabuchi was a power hitting catcher who played for Hanshin and Seibu from 1969 to 1984. It’s really a surprise that he wasn’t elected earlier than this, and that he had to wait for the Japanese equivalent of the Vet’s committee. (Or whatever they’re calling it these days. I guess it’s been replaced by the various Era Committees.) He didn’t manage Meikyukai membership, but the man is a catcher so a certain amount of leeway ought to be granted. Nearly 1/3 of his career hits went for home runs, and he hit 474 of them in total. Three times he cleared 40 homers in a season: 1974-75 and 1980. At his peak he was walking more than he struck out, but that pretty clearly reflects the fact that pitchers were terrified of him, rather than an especially keen batting eye. For his career he posted a 260/361/535 batting line. That would be okay for a first baseman, for a catcher it’s crazy pants. It also tells you what kind of batter he must have been. A 260 batting average with a 535 slugging percentage means that he swings from his heels. A fair number of walks gave him a respectable on base percentage, but I’m still imagining a gigantic upper cut.

That supposition is supported by what is probably the most striking thing about his stat line. Despite being one of the better home run hitters in Japanese history, he hit very few doubles. Often he was in the single digits, and he managed just 167 of them for his career. The only way you manage that is if the balls that you hit are towering moon shots. If he had been a line-drive hitter more of those balls would have bounced off the top of the wall and he would have had a lower HR/2B ratio. Compare him to Ted Williams, the paradigm line-drive hitter. Despite clearing 500 HR for his career, Williams had more doubles than homers. (I write that then I go to read the B-R bullpen entry and it notes the HR/2B disparity in the very first paragraph.)

It’s possible that I’m forgetting someone, but I think that Tabuchi was the greatest catcher of the 1970s. Katsuya Nomura played the entire decade, but he was really a man of the 60s. Great though he was in the 70s, Tabuchi was better. Tabuchi was named to the best-nine five times, and was an 11-time all-star. Although his game was offense, he doesn’t seem to have been a defensive slouch, winning the gold glove (well, diamond glove, but you know what I mean) twice. But regarding that offense: it was he who broke Oh’s streak of 14 consecutive years leading the league in home runs, and he once hit home runs in seven consecutive at bats.

The deal from Hanshin to Seibu was a big one. It was Tabuchi with Kenji Furusawa for Akinobu Mayumi, Masafumi Takeda, Masashi Takenouchi, Yoshiharu Wakana, and cash. Let’s look at this deal. Furusawa was a 30 year old pitcher who had been pretty good but was starting to slip. Seibu would turn him into a reliever. Mayumi was a 24 yo SS who had spent many years playing part time, but would go on to be a star for the Tigers. If the Lions hadn’t been so stingy with playing time when he was young he almost certainly would have made the Meikyukai. Takeda was a bad relief pitcher who pitched five innings for Hanshin before retiring. Takenouchi was an older first baseman who had one good year left. Wakana was evidently intended to be Tabuchi’s replacement, but he was a defense-first catcher who couldn’t hit at all. This was a questionable deal for the Tigers at the time, but it ended up working out pretty well. Mayumi had a long and successful career, and played for Hanshin into his 40s. On the other hand, it’s not like the Lions got burned: Tabuchi was still a star, and he his 43 home runs in his first season playing for them. That’s pretty good.

And the Lions were the team to be on in the 1980s. He was only around for the beginning of their great run, but Tabuchi won the Japan series with them twice.

After retiring Tabuchi coached for a while and did some TV commentary, but now seems mostly to be retired.

As usual with great Tigers, The Hanshin Tigers has a nice biography of him.

Meikyukai: No – Hall of Fame: Yes

JCM 15a. This is another satisfyingly thick menko card. It's late for a menko card, but they knew how to make menko in the 70s. Tabuchi is the guy with the portrait in front. The batter (#12) in the back is, Engel says, unknown.