Japanese HOF Project

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Yoshinori Hirose was an outfielder (although one with a fair amount of time at shortstop and a small number of games elsewhere in the infield) for the Nankai Hawks from 1956 to 1977. After 1972, however, he was strictly a part-time player. Hirose’s biggest calling card was his speed. With a total of 596 stolen bases he’s Japan’s #2 all-time base stealer. Now that’s still only 60% of Fukumoto’s total, so Fukumoto basically laps the field on base stealing, but it’s pretty good.

Actually, I’m surprised that there aren’t more big base stealers in Japan. Japan is famous for playing small ball: bunts, hit and runs, etc. The stolen base should fit into their tactical philosophy perfectly. Of course Japanese seasons are shorter than American ones, and the history of Japanese pro ball is shorter than American pro ball, but Hirose’s stolen base total, #2 in Japan, would be tied with Dummy Hoy for #19 all-time in MLB. As for efficiency: he was successful in 82.9% of his stolen base attempts, which would be 26th all-time in MLB, a fraction above Jacoby Ellsbury.

As a batter Hirose was above average in both OBP and SLG, but neither one was outstanding exactly. I grabbed 1961 (age 24) pretty much randomly, and decided to translate it given the context of the 2018 NL. You’d end up with an OBP of about 350 and a slugging percentage of 457. That’s good and all, but neither mark would be among the league leaders. He’d also have (eyeballing this one) stolen base totals in the low 50s. For a comparable American player I’m going with Max Carey. In context Hirose may have been a somewhat better hitter, but they’re pretty close. His best season was 1964 when he was a huge offensive monster, with a slugging percentage like 66% higher than average, albeit one driven by batting average not by power hitting. Presumably that was a result of an unsustainable batting average on balls in play. Players (in MLB at least, probably elsewhere) have more control over their BABiP than do pitchers, but they also each have an established level to which they tend to regress. Given that Hirose never again (and never before) approached a 366 batting average, my guess is that he got lucky on balls in play that year.

This blog has a really nice progressive leaderboard for stolen bases (as well as lots of nice pieces on Japanese baseball). Hirose was the all-time leader from 1970 to 1976 (inclusive).

The card is a menko from JCM 13a. It was issued in 1960.

I sent Rob Fitts (from whom I bought this card) my want list and he said that several of the players on it have no playing-days cards available. I’m not interested in modern cards commemorating older players, so I’ve removed them from the list of players that I’m targeting. With those guys now excluded, I’m pretty close to finished: 90%. (This figure includes a couple players whose cards I have in hand but haven’t posted about yet. Expect write ups on them later in the week.)