There must have been something in the air last week as there were a number of near no-hitters in Japan. First, of course, was
Roki Sasaki's eight perfect innings on Sunday. On Tuesday,
Burch Smith of the Lions threw seven no-hit innings against the Marines before being lifted for a reliever who lost the no-hitter in the eighth. On Wednesday Manabu Mima of the Marines faced off against Wataru Matsumoto of the Lions and neither pitcher gave up a hit until the seventh inning. And on Saturday,
Matt Shoemaker of the Giants was perfect into the seventh inning against the Dragons.
I've run into a bit of a problem featuring these players in this week's post. Since Smith, Shoemaker and Waguespack are all new to NPB, I don't have cards of any of them. I was going to cheat with Waguespack since the BBM Orix team set was released last week and swipe the image of his card from
Jambalaya but he signed too late to appear in the set! Similarly none of the three of them appear in BBM's 1st Version set which was released a few days ago. So I'm only able to share cards of Matsumoto and Mima:
![]() |
| 2020 Lions Fan Club #17 |
![]() |
| 2021 BBM Marines History 1950-2021 #80 |
