NPB announced most of their major awards this past week. Tomoya Mori of the Lions and Hayato Sakamoto of the Yomiuri Giants were the Pacific League and Central League MVPs respectively.
Speaking of Sakamoto I want to direct your attention to an article about him by Jason Coskrey in the Japan Times this past week. In it Jason points out something I've been thinking for a while (and I think brought up with the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast a while back) - since Sakamoto is unlikely to go to MLB and he will likely become the youngest player to reach 2000 hits as 31 year of age next season, it's possible that Sakamoto could take a run at Isao Harimoto's record for career hits in NPB - 3085. Harimoto is the only NPB player to ever reach 3000 hits - Sakamoto has a pretty good shot at becoming the second if he stays healthy.
Normally I post the Sawamura award winner here but there wasn't one this season. The committee of five former pitchers that vote for the award didn't feel that any pitcher met the criteria for it this season. This is the fifth time in the history of the award that this has happened - the last time was 2000.
The Rookies Of The Year were Rei Takahashi of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks and Munetaka Murakami of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows:
The Best 9 teams were also announced this past week:
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #012 |
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| 2019 BBM 1st Version #232 |
Normally I post the Sawamura award winner here but there wasn't one this season. The committee of five former pitchers that vote for the award didn't feel that any pitcher met the criteria for it this season. This is the fifth time in the history of the award that this has happened - the last time was 2000.
The Rookies Of The Year were Rei Takahashi of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks and Munetaka Murakami of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows:
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| 2019 Calbee #155 |
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| 2019 Calbee #120 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #049 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #019 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #022 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #197 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #025 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #021 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #029 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #134 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #168 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #065 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #290 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #233 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #385 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #268 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #380 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #308 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #240 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #313 |
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| 2019 Epoch NPB #348 |