Japanese Baseball Cards

For the third year in a row the Hiroshima Toyo Carp are Central League Champions and for the third year in a row BBM has issued a box set celebrating the victory. After the somewhat unwieldy name "Realization Of A Great Ambition" in 2016 and the somewhat smoother name "Successful Achievement" in 2017 this year's set is simply called "Three-Peat". The base set has been getting smaller every year - it was 54 cards in 2016, 45 in 2017 and it's 36 cards this year. (And obviously if the Carp win next year the size of the set will drop to 27...)

The 36 cards are split between 30 player cards (which also include manager Koichi Ogata) and six "season summary" cards (my term - don't know what the translation of what's on the cards actually is). Unlike last year's set the player cards in this year's set do not highlight a particular game. The player selection is pretty much what you'd expect from a Carp team set - Ryosuke Kikuchi, Takahiro Arai, Seiya Suzuki, Yoshihiro Maru, Aren Kuri, Tsubasa Aizawa, Kosuke Tanaka, Kris Johnson, Jay Jackson, etc. The set also includes what I think is the first Japanese card of Geronimo Franzua who joined the team in May. The cards do not have the player's name in English on them. There's a couple good photos but the set suffers from the typical BBM lack of imagination in photo selection. Here's some sample cards:

#26 (Ko Shimozuru)

#24 (Ryoma Nishikawa)

#23 (Ryosuke Kikuchi)

#16 (Geronimo Franzua)

The six "season summary" cards each highlight one month of the season (March and April are combined onto one card). Each card highlights a particular Carp victory for the month with the line score for that game appearing on the back. For example this one for August highlights the team's 6 to 4 victory over Hanshin on August 15th:

#35

Like the previous two years I bought an unopened box for this set so I got the "special" card. The "special" card can either be an autographed card or one of 12 3-D "Golden Era" cards. I was kid of disappointed to not get an autographed card but I did get the "Golden Era" card for Seiya Suzuki who's one of my favorite players so it wasn't a total loss. Here's the card - it looks much better in reality:

#SP12

The card is serially numbered #097/189. The press run for the entire box is 3000. I don't know if all the 3-D cards are numbered to 189. If they are, then there's only 732 autographed cards available which means there's slightly less than a 25% chance of pulling an autographed card.

I was disappointed in this set. I liked the previous two sets as I felt they really told the story of the Carp's season each year. This feels more like "hey, here's some more cards of the Carp that are just like the other ones for you to buy". The photos are boring and they don't even show any of the Carp's alternate uniforms this year (although one of them is on the box). Really the only redeeming feature is the 3-D card of Suzuki and considering how much I ended up paying for the set (5700 yen through Rakuten - 3700 for the set and 2000 yen for EMS shipping which works out to about $51) it really wasn't worth it. You can see what you think of all the cards over at Jambalaya.

Former Nankai Hawk infielder Masao Morishita passed away this past week at age 85. Morishita joined the Hawks in 1952 at age 18 after dropping out of high school and playing for Nankai's corporate league team. He spent the next 15 years with them, retiring after the 1966 season. He led the Pacific League in stolen bases in 1955 with 59 and stole 315 over his career, good enough for 27th on the all time list. He made Best 9 teams in 1954 and 1961 and made the All Star team in 1954, 1956, 1957 and 1960. He played in six Nippon Series with the Hawks (1955, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1965 and 1966), winning championships in 1959 and 1964. He won the "Fighting Spirit" award for the 1965 Series. After retirement he coached for the Hawks (1967-68), the Dragons (1969-77), the Whales (1978-80) and the Hawks again (1986). He also first coached and then managed the Brothers Elephant in the CPBL in Taiwan in 1991-92 - I think he was the first Japanese manager in the CPBL.

He also appears to have gone by Nobushige for a given name as his Baseball-Reference entry is under that name.

Morishita had a number of menko cards during his career as well as a card in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set. I think he only has a couple modern cards from the 2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball, 2008 BBM Hawks 70th Anniversary and 2012 Epoch JPBA History Of Best Nine sets. Here's the cards I have of him:

1967 Kabaya-Leaf #314

2006 BBM Nostalgic Baseball #050

2008 BBM Hawks 70th Anniversary #14

He also had a card in the 1992 CPBL set (#50). I don't have this card but I couldn't resist downloading the image of it from the TradingCardDB.com list of Moriwaki's cards:

H/T NPB on Reddit's tweet of his Yahoo! obituary.

Game One of the 2018 Nippon Series between the Carp and the Hawks was yesterday in Hiroshima and it ended in a tie after 12 innings. (Between Game 3 of the World Series which went 18 innings and Game 1 of the Nippon Series there were 30 innings of baseball played in roughly 13 and a half hours on Friday into Saturday.) The last time Game One of the Nippon Series ended in tie was in 1986 and the Carp were the home team in that game also. The Lions ended up winning that Series i eight(!) games and the MVP of the Series was Kimiyasu Kudoh who is now the Hawks manager. Here's a 1986 Calbee card of Kudoh (#210):

Former Flyers, Orions and Carp pitcher Tomehiro Kaneda passed away earlier this month at age 71. Kaneda was the youngest of the four baseball playing Kaneda brothers. The oldest and most famous brother is Hall Of Fame pitcher Masaichi Kaneda while the other two brothers Takayoshi and Hideo were with the Swallows in the late 50's/early 60's although neither of them ever saw any action with the ichi-gun team. Kaneda's nephew Akihito Kaneishi (I think the son of a sister) pitched for the Carp, Fighters and Giants between 1979 and 1998. As far as I know the other three brothers are all still living. Tomehiro was 14 years younger than Masaichi.

2013 BBM Great Numbers #105

Tomehiro Kaneda was a fourth round pick of the Toei Flyers out of Nittsu Urawa of the corporate leagues in the 1968 draft. He wore uniform number 34 with Toei, the same number his brother had worn with the Swallows and Giants. The Flyers used him as both a starter and receiver. He went 18-13 in his rookie season of 1969 and made the All Star team where he got to pitch against brother Masaichi who was in his final season as a player with the Giants. He went 24-16 in 1970, 15-14 in 1971 and 20-12 in 1972 - the 20 wins led the Pacific League in victories that season. Oddly enough he made the All Star team in 1970 and 1971 but not in 1972.

1975 JA5

2008 BBM Lotte 40th Anniversary #26

2017 BBM Time Travel 1975 #25

Kaneda was traded to the Lotte Orions for Osamu Nomura after the 1973 season which allowed him to play for his brother Masaichi who had taken over the team as manager prior to that season. The Broder card shows the two of them with Tomehiro on the left and Masaichi on the right - the card is blank backed and just says "Kaneda" on the front but Engel lists the card as being Tomehiro alone. Tomehiro went 16-7 in 1974, helping to lead the Orions to a Nippon Series championship over the Chunichi Dragons. He lead the Pacific League in victories that season and was named MVP of the league. He also was named to the Best 9 team that year for the only time in his career.

1979 Takara Carp #44

1979 TCMA #28

2015 BBM Carp Legends #20

Masaichi resigned as manager of Lotte after the 1978 season and Tomehiro was traded to the Carp along with Hidetake Watanabe for Takuya Mochizuki, Takahiro Kenmotsu and Hideyuki Hirata. He spent four seasons with the Carp, mostly working in relief. He did not appear for the Carp in either the 1979 or 1980 Nippon Series. Probably the most notable event of his time in Hiroshima was Sadaharu Oh hitting his 850th home run off of him in 1980. He spent the entire 1982 season with the Carp's farm team and then retired. He coached for Lotte for two years (1987-88) and also managed a health food company. He played for the Tokyo Dreams of the Masters League in 2001.

I've gotten my collegiate sets a little out of order, mostly because I got them in a kind of random way 10 years ago and also because it's been 10 years(!). BBM's second collegiate set was the 2008 Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version set, not the Collegiate National Team set like I previous posted.

This set was issued by BBM in September of 2008 and was a box set containing 36 cards plus some sort of insert card (don't remember the details off hand and I didn't get one). The 36 cards were split evenly among the six teams and included a team card for each team so there were 30 actual player cards in the set. Ten of those 30 players (including all five Waseda players) went on to play in NPB. Of those ten, five were in the Spring Version set (Takeshi Hosoyamada, Shinji Iwata, Takeshi Komatsu, Keijiro Matsumoto and Hiroki Uemoto). (Taking into account players who didn't go on to NPB there were 16 total players in the set who were in the previous set.) Six of the ten players would also appear in the Collegiate National Team set (Hosoyamada, Iwata, Matsumoto, Yuki Saitoh, Hisashi Takeuchi and Uemoto - this is actually the first set that Saitoh appears in).

Here's a summary of the careers of the ten players who went on to the NPB. (Some of these may look familiar by now...) Four of the players were still active in NPB in 2018.

Player	College	Year	Drafted	Notes
Yuki Egarashi	Meiji	4	2011 Giants 6th	Played for Toshiba after graduating before being drafted. Played for Giants 2012-17
Takeshi Hosoyamada	Waseda	4	2008 Baystars 4th	Played for Baystars 2009-13, Hawks 2014-15. Was released by DeNA after 2013 and joined Hawks as ikusei player. Made the Hawks' 70 man roster at the beginning of the 2015 season. Played for Toyota after leaving Hawks
Shinji Iwata	Meiji	4	2008 Dragons 5th	Played for Dragons 2009-16. Dragons minor league pitching coach starting in 2018
Takeshi Komatsu	Hosei	4	2008 Carp 3rd	Played for Carp 2009-13. Was on Carp's ikusei squad in 2013 and was "dispatched" to the Tokoshima Indigo Sox of the Shikoku Island League that year. Minor league coach for the Carp starting in 2018
Keijiro Matsumoto	Waseda	4	2008 Baystars 1st	Played for Baystars 2009-17. Joined Nippon Steel Sumikin Kazusa Magic in 2018
Yusuke Nomura	Meiji	1	2011 Carp 1st	Played for Carp 2012-present. 2012 Rookie Of The Year. Lead Central League in wins in 2016. All Star in 2012 & 2016. Named to Best 9 team in 2016
Tatsuya Ohishi	Waseda	2	2010 Lions 1st	Played for Lions 2011-present
Yuki Saitoh	Waseda	2	2010 Fighters 1st	Played for Fighters 2011-present. All Star in 2011-12
Hisashi Takeuchi	Hosei	3	2009 Carp 3rd	Played for Carp 2010-15
Hiroki Uemoto	Waseda	4	2008 Tigers 3rd	Played for Tigers 2009-present

Here's each player's card from the set plus a card of them from their NPB days:

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #02

2017 BBM Giants #G27

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #10

2011 BBM 2nd Version #661

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #01

2015 BBM Dragons #D16

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #25

2009 BBM 1st Version #359

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #11

2016 BBM Baystars #DB67

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #03

2018 Calbee #111

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #09

2018 BBM Icons-Fanfare #04

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #08

2017 BBM Fighters #F02

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #26

2013 Bandai Owners League 04 #048

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #07

2018 Epoch NPB #271

Of the remaining 20 players in the set, two of them had their only card ever in this set - Yuhei Imura (Keio) and Kenya Ohbayashi (Rikkio). The other 18 players appeared in other college sets - Kosuke Aizawa (Keio), Takayuki Chida (Meiji), Hitoshi Fuchigami (Keio), Hirata Furugata (Tokyo), Yusuke Hasegawa (Hosei), Daisuke Ikarashi (Rikkio), Junpei Komichi (Meiji), Takeru Maeshira (Tokyo), Nobuaki Nakabayashi (Keio), Masahito Nihira (Rikkio), Takahiro Ohtsubo (Tokyo), Yo Sasaki (Hosei), Kazuki Suetoh (Rikkio), Yuichi Suzuki (Tokyo), Takeyasu Takahashi (Tokyo), Soichiro Tanaka (Rikkio), Shota Waizumi (Hosei) and Naoki Yamaguchi (Keio).

The 2018 Nippon Series ended yesterday with the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks defeating the Hiroshima Toyo Carp 2-0 in Game Six, clinching the Hawks' second consecutive title and fourth in five years. As I've done the past few years I'm going to highlight the Series award winners. The winners of these awards used to have extra cards in BBM's annual Nippon Series set that was published from 1991 to 2012.

Series MVP Takuya Kai (2012 BBM Hawks #H77)

"Fighting Spirit" Seiya Suzuki (2013 Front Runner Carp Season Summary #16)

Outstanding Player Yuito Mori (2014 BBM Young Hawks - Futures & Legends #09)

Outstanding Player Akira Nakamura (2015 BBM Hawks #H60)

Outstanding Player Yuki Yanagita (2012 BBM Celebration Of Hawks #26)

Series MVP Takuya Kai set a record for throwing out six consecutive Carp base runners. I had forgotten that Kai was originally an ikusei player - he was drafted in the sixth round of the ikusei phase of the 2010 draft and wasn't signed to the Hawks' 70-man roster until 2014. (The Hawks also took Kodai Senga as an ikusei player in the same draft which probably makes that the best ikusei draft by a team ever.)

There's been a couple recently announced sets:

- Epoch is putting out ultra high-end team sets called "Season Achievements" for the Baystars and Lions. The Lions set was actually released yesterday. Boxes contain just six cards (although I think two of them are autographed) and retail for 16,200 yen. The base set contains 21 cards and there's a parallel version of each card. There's also a ton of different types of autographed cards. The Baystars set will be released on November 23rd. Like those of the Lions set, boxes of this set contain just six cards although you'll get either two autographed cards or an autographed card and a memorabilia card in the box. The boxes have a slightly lower retail price of 15,120 yen. There are 33 cards in the base set and a parallel version of each card is available. The set also contains a number of different versions of the aforementioned autograph and memorabilia cards.

- Epoch is also putting out a set called something like "Footprints Of The Tigers 2018" that's appears to be in conjunction with an exhibit that's been going on at the Koshien Museum since the end of August. It's yet another ultra high-end set with six card boxes retailing for 16,200 yen. One of those cards will be an autographed card while another will be either an autograph or a memorabilia card. The base set is 27 cards divided between 14 OB players and 13 active players, all from the Tigers. I don't know if there's a parallel version of the base cards. There's two types of autographed cards and a variety of memorabilia cards that appear to be focused on Koshien Stadium - relic cards for balls, bases and home plates used at the Stadium. The set will be out on November 23rd.

- When we last checked in on the KBO, Dan had mentioned there was a new set from SCC out called KBO Collection 2 Black which had cards for only five of the KBO teams - Doosan, Kia, SK, NC and Hanwha. Dan had speculated that there might be another set covering the other five teams and he was correct - the KBO Collection 2 Red set has cards for Samsung, LG, KT, Nexen and Lotte. It looks like the set has the same parameters as the Black set - it has an 105 card base set plus 10 rare "Hidden Hologram" insert cards. The set has been out for a couple of weeks now.

- BBM has announced the third entry in their "Time Travel" series. This edition is for 1979. Like the 1989 version that came out late last year, the base set has basically five subsets - the player cards that are made to look like they were actually issued in 1979, a subset for players who retired in 1979, highlights for 1979, a subset for players who were born in 1979 and a subset for pop culture (non-baseball) events from 1979. There will also be two insert sets featuring the leaders from each league. BBM's information for the set does not say how large any of these subsets will be. I expect that the base set will be 99 cards (since the other two sets were that size) and there will be 18 insert cards between the two sets. There will also be autographed cards randomly inserted into packs. The set will be released in late-December. I am unsure of what the "cover date" on the cards will be. The two previous issues came out in December of 2016 and 2017 respectively and had a "cover date" of 2017 and 2018. I'd expect this set to have a "cover date" of 2019 but the sample images on this set show 2018 instead. So this will be either the final 2018 set or the first 2019 set.

I've been late getting to the retiring players this year so I thought I'd start off with a fairly easy one - easy only in that I don't have many cards of the player. Jin-Young Lee announced his retirement last month, bringing his 20 year career in the KBO to a close. Lee was originally drafted by the Ssangbangwool Raiders in the first round of the 1999 KBO draft out of Gunsan Commerce High School. He made his debut with the Raiders in May of 1999. The Raiders folded following the 1999 season and many of their players (including Lee) joined the SK Wyverns, the team that replaced the Raiders. As far as I know he's the last Ssangbangwool player who was still active. He played for the Wyverns through the 2008 season after which he became a free agent and signed with the LG Twins. Following the 2015 season he was taken by the KT Wiz in the expansion draft (at least I think that's what happened). He played for Korea in the 2006, 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics as well as for their gold medal winning team in the 2008 Olympics.

Here's a smattering of his cards - there's a somewhat comprehensive list over at TradingCardsDB.com.

1999 Teleca #142

2010 KBO #AT006

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Three #SBC03-012-SS

"2017" SCC #SCC-01-KT23/N

Despite playing in three World Baseball Classics he only had cards from the 2009 tournament. I'm used to Topps reusing photos among the cards they did for that set but I was somewhat surprised that Konami had used the same photo that Topps had used for two of his cards:

2009 Topps WBC Redemption

2009 Topps Chrome #W35

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R139

Epoch released a set for the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL) about a month ago. This is the second set Epoch has released for the league - the first was two years ago. The set has a base set of 86 cards, 8 cards more than the 2016 edition. There were "checki" cards available in boxes as well as randomly inserted autograph and memorabilia cards in packs.

There are four teams in the league and players from all four teams appear in the set. Unlike the NPB sets, the cards are not evenly distributed between the teams. There are 23 cards for Aichi Dione (including the mascot, the manager and two coaches), 23 for Kyoto Flora (also including the mascot, the manager and two coaches), 15 for Reia (including the mascot, the manager and only one coach) and 24 cards for Saitama Astraia (including again the mascot, the manager and two coaches) plus a card for Ami Inamura, the "Queen Of First Pitch". A number of the players are rookies and have the same "Rookie" designation on their card that Epoch has used in some of their NPB sets. One thing that was a little odd was that Dione and Flora both had three rookies each while Astraia had none but all the players with Reia were rookies! I did a little research and it looks like the league uses Reia as kind of a development team.

50 of the players who were in the 2016 set are in this one also. I will confess to still not knowing a whole lot about this league so I can't tell you if anyone significant was left out. Actually according to the list of players for the league at their website there isn't anyone left out of the set - there's actually one player in the set (Natsumi Nakano of Astraia) who's no longer on the team's roster (she retired). There are six players in the set from the Samurai Japan team that won the 2018 Women's Baseball World Cup back in August - Yuki Kawabata, Iori Miura, Tomomi Nakata, Ayami Sato, Rina Taniyama and Asaka Tsuru. Everyone but Tsuru were in the 2016 set as well (I had missed Nakata when I did my post on the team back in August). Ayaka Deguchi from the team was in the 2016 set but not in this one as she retired following the 2016 season. In addition there are three Taiwanese players in the league (all rookies) who played for the Taiwanese team in the tournament - Yu-Ying Hsieh, Chia-Wen Shen and Chi Tseng. Several of the coaches and managers are male and NPB veterans - Hiroki Fukutome, Tomoya Kawaguchi, Toyoji Matsumura, Shogo Mori, Heishu Ohhara and Takanobu Tsujiuchi.

Here's some sample cards:

#13

#22

#24

#29

#25

#51

#57

#77

#85

#86

I believe that the Chihiro Satoh card shows the commemoration of her 200th career hit.

I really like this set. I think Epoch did a great job with the photo selection - they and BBM should use this set as a template for photo selection for their NPB sets. You can see all the cards over at Jambalaya - both the base set and some of the cheki and autograph cards.

I really try not to feature the same players over and over as Card Of The Week but sometimes the circumstances seem unavoidable. I highlighted Yuki Yanagita being named MVP of the Pacific League Climax Series three weeks ago and included him with the other award winners for the Nippon Series last week. So I didn't intend to do him again this week but then Friday happened. It was the opening game of the MLB "All Stars" vs Samurai Japan series and the MLB team was up 6 to 4 going into the bottom of the ninth. Japan had pushed across a run on a couple singles and a stolen base but both Tetsuto Yamada and Shogo Akiyama had struck out so there were two outs with one on when Yanagita came to the plate against Padres reliever Kirby Yates and did this:

This came a week and a day after his walk off home run won Game Five of the Nippon Series. He added an additional home run in yesterday's game as well - a two run shot off of Erasmo Ramirez of the Mariners. He went 4-4 yesterday, scoring two runs and knocking in four. I think this is the first time he's ever played for Samurai Japan - he was recovering from injuries and had to miss both the Premier 12 in 2015 and the World Baseball Classic in 2017. I'm not sure if he's ever suited up for one of the "friendly" matches Japan has played over the past few years but I do know he hasn't made it into either of Calbee's Samurai Japan sets from the last few years (a set that sadly does not look like it will have a 2018 edition).

Here's Yanagita's 2013 Calbee card (#209) - I believe this is his first card from them:

I have not watched MLB's coverage of these games - for some reason MLB decided that they were only going to broadcast the game on the MLB Network and not on-line at MLB.tv. Since we cut the cord a couple years ago I don't get the MLB Network so I'm out of luck. I've been finding other streams on the internet so I've been watching the Japanese broadcasts. So I don't know how atrocious the broadcast team has been. I did notice one thing just now about the box scores on MLB's web page however. There's a link to a player named "Kazuk Tanaka" who is listed as being born on October 28, 1981. I don't know who this is. I assume that they really mean Kazuki Tanaka from the Eagles but he was both on August 8, 1994. What's odd is that there's a Kazunori Tanaka who played for the Baystars in the 00's who's birthday is October 28, 1981. So MLB apparently decided that Samurai Japan had a 37 year old guy on their roster who'd been retired for 10 years.

H/T for the video to this post on NPB Reddit.

Long time Chunichi Dragons relief pitcher Hitoki Iwase formally announced his retirement back at the beginning of October. Iwase was a second round pick of his home-prefecture Dragons out of NTT Tokai of the corporate leagues in the fall 1998 draft (Kosuke Fukudome was the team's first round pick that year). He spent a few years working in middle relief for the Dragons before new manager Hiromitsu Ochiai moved him into the closer's role in 2004. He sent an NPB record for most saves in a season with 46 in 2005 - this is still the Central League record although Dennis Sarfate of the Hawks broke the record with 54 in 2017). He remained the Dragons' closer through 2014 but after that injuries prevented him from pitching much. He missed the entire 2015 season and only got into 15 games in 2016. He spent the past two seasons back in a middle relief role. He holds the NPB record for most saves with 407 and most pitching appearances with 1002.

He lead the league in "Middle Relief" three times (1999, 2000 and 2003) and saves five times (2005-06, 2009-10 and 2012). He appeared in six Nippon Series (1999, 2004, 2006-07, 2010-11), getting the final out of the deciding game of the 2007 Series, the only one the Dragons won of the six (the game was also a combined perfect game between him and Daisuke Yamai). He made the All Star team ten times (2000-01, 2003, 2005-07, 2010-13). He was a member of the Japanese Olympic Baseball Team in 2004 and 2008 and also played for the National Team in the 2003 Asian Championship which was a qualifier for the 2004 Summer Games.

Iwase's BBM rookie card was #311 from the 1999 set. His first Calbee card was #035 from the 2000 set.

1999 BBM #311

2001 Upper Deck #52

2004 BBM 1st Version "Asian Championship 2003" #AJ3

2006 BBM 1st Version #458

2007 BBM Nippon Series #S04

2008 Calbee #109

2010 BBM 1st Version #038

2012 BBM All Stars #A43

2014 BBM 80th Anniversary Pitchers Edition #94

2018 BBM 1st Version #274

The 2018/19 season for the Australian Baseball League kicks off in less than six hours and I wanted to do a quick round up of some of the Asian players in the league this season, especially of course the NPB players. There are at least nine NPB players down under this winter.

As usual the Saitama Seibu Lions are sending players to the Melbourne Aces - this will be the eighth straight season they've done so. This year they are sending only two players - pitchers Hiromasa Saitoh and Hayato Takagi. Saitoh was the Lions first round pick in the 2017 draft out of Meiji University. Takagi was a third round pick of the Giants in the 2014 draft and was acquired by the Lions as compensation last winter when the Giants signed Ryoma Nogami as a free agent. Graveyard Baseball has more details on these two players.

2018 Epoch NPB #67

2018 BBM 1st Version #033

The Canberra Cavalry and the Yokohama DeNA Baystars entered into a working agreement this fall and as a result the Baystars are sending four players to Canberra for the winter. The players are Koki Aoyagi, Shota Imanaga, Yuki Kuniyoshi and Tomoya Mikami Imanaga is the big name of this quartet - he was the Baystars first round pick in the 2015 draft .out of Komozawa University and went 11-7 in 2017 and helped the Baystars follow an unlikely path to the Nippon Series from a third place finish. Aoyagi was the sixth round pick of the Baystars in 2015 out of Osaka Kinoshige High School and has yet to play for the ichi-gun team. Kuniyoshi was the first pick of the Baystars in the ikusei portion of the 2009 draft. He was registered to the 70-man roster in the middle of the 2011 season. Mikami was a fourth round pick of the Baystars in the 2013 draft from JX-ENEOS of the corporate leagues and is a two time All Star (2014, 2016).

2016 BBM Baystars #DB66

2017 Calbee #053

2012 BBM 2nd Version #440

2015 BBM Baystars "Blue Diamond" insert #BD05

The ABL is featuring two new teams this season. The Auckland Tuatara (who play in New Zealand) have three members of the Chiba Lotte Marines on their roster - Taiga Hirasawa, Tomohito Sakai and Atsuki Taneichi. Hirasawa was the first pick of the 2015 draft by Lotte out of his high school in Sendai. Sakai and Taneich were taken in the second and sixth round of the 2016 draft respectively. In addition to the NPB players, the Tuatara are also getting three players from the Uni-Lions of the CPBL - Yu-Hsuan Chen, Chun-Wei Kuo and Yi-Hsuan Tsai.

2016 BBM Classic #018

2018 BBM 2nd Version #467

2017 BBM Marines #M33

The other new ABL team is the Geelong-Korea team that has been stocked with all Korean players. As you might expect there are no NPB players on the roster. The team is not affiliated with the KBO so there are no active KBO players on the roster but there are three players with KBO experience - Jin-Woo Kim (formerly of Kia), Jae-Gon Lee (Lotte) and Jin-Yong Jang (LG). Of these three only Kim appears to have had any baseball cards in the SMG/Duael/Ntreev/SCC sets of the past few years.

2014 Superstar Baseball Season One #SBC01-108

The only other Asian players I'm aware of in the ABL this season are two members of the Fubon Guardians of the CPBL who have joined the Sydney Blue Sox - Hao-Wei Shen and Chia-Jen Lo.

There are a couple additional NPB players who are playing in the Western Hemisphere this winter. Tomo Otsaka of the Baystars has rejoined Yaquis de la Ciudad Obregon of the Mexican Pacific League - he spent the first half of last season there. The Fukuoka Softbank Hawks are sending three players to the Puerto Rico Winter League (although I don't know which team) - Yusuke Masago, Ukyo Shuto and Junpei Takahashi.

2017 BBM Baystars #DB75

2017 BBM Hawks #H68

2018 BBM Rookie Edition #007

2017 Epoch Hawks #13

I'm sure that there will be additional players that I missed that are playing in various winter leagues around the world. I will make additional posts as I discover players.

Kazuo Matsui recently announced he was retiring after a 25 year career split between NPB and MLB. Matsui was originally a third round pick of the Lions out of PL Gakuen High School in the 1993 draft. He debuted with the ichi-gun Lions in 1995 and remained a mainstay in their lineup until he left for MLB after the 2003 season. He signed with the New York Mets as a free agent and played for them for 2 1/2 seasons before he was traded to the Colorado Rockies for Eli Marrero midway through the 2006 season. He played for the Rockies until the end of the 2007 season and appeared in the post season with them that year, including playing in the World Series against a Red Sox team that included his former Lions teammate Daisuke Matsuzaka. He signed with the Astros for the 2008 season and spent a little bit more than the next two seasons with them. He was released by Houston in May of 2010 and rejoined the Rockies for the remainder of that season although he spent all his time with their Triple-A team in Colorado Springs. He returned to Japan for the 2011 season, joining the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. He spent seven years in Sendai before returning to the Lions for a final go-round this year. He'll become the Lions farm team manager next season.

Matsui lead the Pacific League in hit twice (1999, 2002) and stolen bases three times (1997-99). He was Pacific League MVP in 1998. He was named to the Best 9 team seven times - consecutively from 1997 to 2003. He also won four Golden Glove awards (1997-98, 2002-03). He's a member of the Meikyukai having reached his 2000th hit (including his MLB hits) in August of 2009. He made the All Star team nine times (1997-2003, 2013 and 2015) and played in four Nippon Series - three in losing efforts with the Lions (1997, 1998 and 2002) and one with the Eagles in which they won (2013). He also played for the Japanese National Team twice - the Asian Championship in 2003 which was a qualifier for the 2004 Olympics (which he did not play in since he was with the Mets then) and the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

I've previously done a "retrospective" post for Matsui over three years ago when he got his 2000th career NPB hit so I'll show a different batch of his cards now:

1997 BBM Nippon Series #S45

1998 BBM #539

2000 BBM #13

2001 Lions Fan Club #7

2011 Bandai Owners League 02 #063

2013 Calbee #AS-19

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Edition #59

2014 BBM Rookie Edition Classic #01

2015 Eagles Team Set #SS1-11

2018 BBM 1st Version #046

Another player who retired at the end of the 2018 season was Shuichi Murata. Murata was taken by the Yokohama Baystars in the "free acquisition" portion of the 2002 draft out of Nihon University where he had set a Tohto University Baseball League record with 8 home runs during the fall 2001 season. He was a starter for the Baystars almost immediately after signing and hit 25 home runs in his first season. He led the Central League in home runs in 2007-08. He moved to the Giants as a free agent after the 2011 season. The Giants released him following the 2017 season and he spent 2018 with the Tochigi Golden Braves of the independent Baseball Challenge League. He had a good season with Tochigi and was hoping to play his way back into NPB but when the July 31st player acquisition deadline came without anyone signing him he decided to call it quits as of the end of the season.

Murata was a five time All Star (2006, 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2014) and made the Central League Best 9 team four times (2008, 2012, 2013 and 2016). He also won three Golden Gloves (2013, 2014 and 2016). He played in two Nippon Series with the Giants, beating the Fighters in 2012 but losing to the Eagles in 2013. He suited up for the Japanese National Team for the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

His first BBM cards were #40 from the 2003 Rookie Edition set and #177 from the 2003 1st Version set. His first Calbee card wasn't until #165 in the 2004 set.

2003 BBM Rookie Edition #40

2003 BBM 1st Version #177

2005 BBM Baystars #YB97

2008 BBM 1st Version #439

2009 Konami WBC Heroes "Special" #W09S002

2011 BBM All Stars #A59

2011 BBM Tohto 80th Memorial #68

2012 BBM Nippon Series #S22

2014 Front Runner Giants Stars & Legends #9

2016 Calbee #191

2017 BBM Fusion "Great Record" #GR16

The 2018 Korean Series wrapped last Monday with a game for the ages. Going into the game the SK Wyverns were leading the Series three games to two but Doosan took a late 4-3 lead in the game and was one strike away from winning the game and evening the Series until Jeong Choi tied the game up with a solo home run. The game went on until the 13th inning before Don-Min Han put SK up for good with a solo home run in the top of the inning. Han ended up being named MVP of the Series. This was the first KBO championship for SK who were managed by former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and Kansas City Royal manager Trey Hillman. Hillman became the first manager to ever win championships in both NPB and KBO (he led the Fighters to a Nippon Series championship in 2006). Hillman is stepping down as Wyverns manager now due to family issues.

Here are cards of Choi, Han and Hillman:

2015 "Hell's Fireball" #PA01-SK007 (Choi)

2014 Superstar Baseball Season Two #SBC02-073 (Han)

2017 Vittum Foreign Attack #34

Giants pitcher Tetsuya Yamaguchi retired at the end of the 2018 season. Yamaguchi had an interesting route to NPB stardom - he had an opportunity to go to Kokushikan University after graduating high school but ended up signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks instead. He spent three years (2002-04) playing for the Missoula Osprey, Arizona's Pioneer League entry. He returned to Japan in 2005 and worked out with the Baystars, Eagles and Giants who ended up taking him as their first (and only) pick in the ikusei portion of the 2005 draft. He was moved onto the 70-man roster in early 2007 and made his ichi-gun debut in April of that season although he only got into 32 games with the ichi-gun team that season so he his rookie status had not expired. He was the first Giants ikusei player to make it to the top team. He really came into his own in 2008, going 11-2 in middle relief and being named Rookie Of The Year - the first time a former ikusei player won that award (the second was Tetsuya Matsumoto of the Giants who won it the following year). Yamaguchi was a mainstay of the Giants' bullpen over a nine year stretch from 2008 to 2016, appearing in at least 60 games each year. His numbers declined in 2016 however, with his ERA soaring to 4.88 after having never been more than 3.05 before. He was limited to only 18 games with the ichi-gun Giants in 2016 and spent all of 2017 with their farm team.

Yamaguchi lead the league in "Hold Points" three times - 2009, 2012 & 2013) and made the All Star team five times (2009, 2012-15). He played in four Nippon Series - winning in 2009 and 2012 and losing in 2008 and 2013. He also suited up for World Baseball Classic in both 2009 and 2013.

Because BBM didn't start including the ikusei drafted players in the Rookie Edition sets until 2009 Yamaguchi does not appear in the 2006 Rookie Edition set. His first BBM card was #727 from the "1st Version Update" subset of the 2007 BBM 2nd Version set (which BBM somewhat inexplicably labelled as being "1st Version") and his first Calbee card was #63 from the 2009 set. His first ever baseball cards however were actually from the Missoula Osprey team sets. He had cards in each of their sets from 2002 to 2004. I don't have any of these cards but I swiped the images of the 2003 and 2004 cards from TradingCardDB.com:

Here's a bunch of his Japanese cards:

2007 BBM 2nd Version #727

2009 BBM 1st Version #436

2009 Konami WBC Heroes #W09R096

2011 Bandai Owners League 04 #094

2012 BBM Nippon Series #S08

2013 Calbee #AS-02

2015 BBM Memories Of Uniform #009

2018 Epoch NPB #337

Another player who retired at the end of the season was former Fighters and Buffaloes infielder Eiichi Koyano. Koyano was a fifth round pick of the Fighters out of Soka University in the fall 2002 draft. He made his debut with the ichi-gun team in the 2003 season but he didn't become a regular for the team until 2007 - part of the delay was due to panic attacks he suffered during the 2006 season. His best season was 2010 when he hit .311 with 16 home runs and a Pacific League leading 109 RBIs. He made the All Star team for the only time that season and was also named to the Best 9 team. He spent about seven years as the Fighters' regular third (and sometimes first) baseman (2007-13) but was slowed by injuries in 2014 and missed roughly half of the season. He left Hokkaido as a free agent after 2014 and signed with the Orix Buffaloes. He missed much of his first two seasons in Osaka with injuries but bounced back to play a full season in 2017. He ended up hurt much of 2018 however and decided to retire.

Koyano won Golden Glove awards three times (2009-10 & 2012) and played on the losing side in three Nippon Series (2007, 2009 and 2012), winning an "Outstanding Player" award in the 2009 Series.

His first BBM cards were #80 from the 2003 Rookie Edition set and #338 from the 2003 1st Version set. His first Calbee card wasn't until 2007 - #224. He had at least two Konami cards before his first Calbee card.

2003 BBM Rookie Edition #80

2003 BBM 1st Version #338

2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Old White Edition #B05W120

2009 BBM Nippon Series #S64

2010 BBM All Stars #A55

2011 BBM 1st Version #363

2011 Fighters Victory Card #041

2013 BBM 1st Version #393

2015 BBM 1st Version #042

2018 Calbee #022

Got a package in the mail from Dan Skrezyna last week containing the latest KBO card sets from Daewoo Media. The first set I'm going to talk about is the 2018 SCC set that I think is officially called "KBO Collection".

This set came out back in August. It contains 253 total cards but the last 13 are all autograph cards so the base set is 240 cards. The cards are split evenly between the 10 KBO teams so each team has 24 cards.

What gets a little confusing about the base set is there are five different types of cards in it. There are 100 "normal" cards, 45 "rare" cards, 43 "holo" cards, 43 "facsimile autograph" cards and 9 "rookie" cards. Each category is not split up evenly between the 10 teams (which is obvious for anything beyond the "normal" cards). SK has only 7 "normal" cards while NC has 14! Each team has anywhere between 3 (Hanwha) and 6 (SK) "rare" cards, 2 (Doosan) and 7 (Samsung) "holo" cards and 1 (NC) and 8 (Doosan) "facsimile autograph" cards. Each team has only one "rookie" card except Lotte which has two and NC and SK which have none. The "holo" cards The "normal" and "rare" cards have a matte finish while the others have a glossy finish. I don't know if any of the cards other than the "normal" cards are short-printed - you'd think that at least the "rare" ones would be but I don't know if that's the case.

I don't know a whole lot about the KBO so I don't have a sense for how good the player selection is in it. As usual there are no foreign players in the set. Most of the guys who've played in MLB and NPB show up including Lee Dae-Ho, Lim Chang-Yong, Park Byung-Ho, Kim Hyun-Soo, and Hwang Jae-Gyun. The set also includes stars like Choi Jeong, Han Dong-Min and Son Ah-Seop. Off hand the only guys I noticed who were seemed to be missing were Lee Bum-Ho and Kim Tae-Kyun.

Here's some sample cards from each type:

#SCCR-01/079 Kang Yoon-Koo (Normal)

#SCCR-01/176 Seo Kyun (Normal)

#SCCR-01/047 Park Kun-Woo (Rare)

#SCCR-01/112 Kim Sung-Hyun (Rare)

#SCCR-01/196 Jang Pill-Joon (Holo)

#SCCR-01/001 Lim Chang-Yong (Holo)

#SCCR-01/230 Shim Woo-Jun (Facsimile Autograph)

#SCCR-01/116 No Soo-Kwang (Facsimile Autograph)

#SCCR-01/159 Kim Hye-Sung (Rookie)

#SCCR-01/066 Han Dong-Hee (Rookie)

I have to say that this is a very nice set. It's very attractive once you get over the multiple card types in the base set. The photos are attractive and aren't all "pitchers pitching, batters batting" like most of BBM's NPB issues lately. My one main gripe with the set is that there's no biographical or statistical information on the back of the cards - they're all identical. Which makes sense if they were used in some sort of collectible card game but I don't see any evidence that that's the case. Here's what the backs look like:

Dan wrote about this set back at the end of August and he's also uploaded the checklist and images of the entire set to TradingCardDB.com. I want to thank Dan for getting me the set.

The Hiroshima Toyo Carp established a baseball Academy in the Dominican Republic and have had a steady stream of players from it feeding the team. One of the earliest products of it was Robinson Checo who was an NPB All Star in 1995 and spent a couple years in the Red Sox and Dodgers organizations in the late 90's. More recent Academy products include Xavier Batitsta and Alejandro Mejia.

There were two Carp Academy products who both played for the Carp in the late 1990's and went on to play in MLB as well. The most famous of this pair was Alfonso Soriano who hit over 400 home runs in a 16 year Major League career. He only played 9 games with the ichi-gun Carp however and there was never a Japanese baseball card of him (this is NOT a real card of him even though I occasionally see it show up other places).

The other player was Timo Perez who appeared in 227 games with the Carp's top team over four seasons (1996-99). He left Japan as a free agent and signed with the New York Mets in time for the 2000 season. He spent most of the season at the Mets' Triple-A team in Norfolk but he was promoted in time to play for New York in the post-season, including the World Series against the Yankees. He was traded to the White Sox just before the season started in 2004 and was a member of their World Championship team in 2005. He kicked around for a few years after that in the Reds, Cardinals, Tigers, Dodgers and Phillies organizations before he retired after the 2012 season which he spent with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.

Perez had two cards in Japan that I know of. Both of them were from Diamond Heroes, BBM's first version of a high end set (which became "Touch The Game" in 2002 and "Genesis" in 2012). He was card #46 in the 1996 set (which was the first Diamond Heroes set) and #60 in the 1998 set. The only one of the two that I own is the 1996 card:

I would love to see BBM do an OB set for the Carp that featured players from their Dominican Academy over the years. It'd be cool to get a legitimate NPB card for Soriano.

In addition to the 2018 SCC KBO Collection set, Dan Skrezyna also included the two 2018 KBO Collection 2 sets (Black and Red) in the package he sent me recently. Each of these sets features players from five of the ten KBO teams. The Black set has Doosan, Hanwha, Kia, NC and SK while the Red set has KT, LG, Lotte, Nexen and Samsung. Both sets came out either in late September or early October.

Each set has a total of 115 cards although the last 10 are "Hidden Hologram" cards so the base set is only 105 cards. The cards are split evenly with 21 cards per team with the exceptions of Doosan (which has 22 cards) and NC (which only has 20). Like the first set, the base set is broken into multiple card types although these sets only have four types rather than five. There are 50 "normal" cards in each set along with 32 "rare" cards, 15 "holo" cards and 8 "signature autograph" cards. There are no "rookie" cards in the set but seven of the nine players who appeared on "rookie" cards in the first set appear in this set - their cards just aren't labeled as "rookie" cards. The card types aren't split evenly between the teams but it's close - each team has 9 to 11 "normal" cards, 6 or 7 "rare" cards, 3 "holo" cards and 1 or 2 "facsimile autograph" cards. All the cards have a glossy finish.

I don't have much to say about the player selection other than I think that all the players I mentioned that appeared in the first set appear in these two. There's about 40 players between the two sets that did not appear in the first set - the most significant of the two are former NPB players Lee Bum-Ho and Kim Tae-Kyun.

As was the case with the first set, the backs of these cards are all identical so there's no biographical or statistical information on them. The backs are different between the two sets - with the back of the Black set having a black background and those of the Red set having a red background.

Here's some sample cards - first from the Black set:

#SCCR-02B/027 Jang Won-Jun (Normal)

#SCCR-02B/020 Na Ji-Wan (Normal)

#SCCR-02B/098 Jung Keun-Woo (Rare)

#SCCR-02B/074 Lee Jae-Won (Holo)

#SCCR-02B/053 (Facsimile Autograph)

And from the Red set:

#SCCR-02R/079 Kim Sang-Su (Normal)

#SCCR-02R/037 Ahn Ik-Hun (Normal)

#SCCR-02R/055 Kim Ha-Sung (Rare)

#SCCR-02R/104 Kang Baek-Ho (Holo)

#SCCR-02R/015 (Facsimile Autograph)

It's probably not obvious from the scan but the "rare" cards feature a shimmering lattice finish.

Here's what the card backs look like - you can probably guess which one's which:

So the only places where the color in the name of the set is reflected on the cards themselves are in the background on the "Facsimile Autograph" cards and the card backs.

Dan has added checklists for both sets and uploaded images for all the base set cards over at TradingCardsDB.com (link for Black and Red). And I want to thank Dan again for getting me these sets.

I've been having an old Blue Oyster Cult song running through my head while dealing with these sets:

2018 BBM Carp Three-Peat Box Set

RIP Masao Morishita

Card Of The Week October 28

RIP Tomehiro Kaneda

2008 BBM Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version Set - Where Are They Now?

Card Of The Week November 4

Last Of The 2018 Sets (and maybe the first 2019 one)

Jin-Young Lee

2018 Epoch JWBL set

Card Of The Week November 11

Hitoki Iwase

Asian Players In The 2018/19 Australian Baseball League And Other Winter Leagues

Kazuo Matsui

Shuichi Murata

Card Of The Week November 18

Tetsuya Yamaguchi

Eiichi Koyano

2018 SCC KBO Collection set

Card Of The Week November 25

2018 SCC KBO Collection 2 - The Red And The Black