Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

I suspect that Hideo Nomo isn’t in the hall of fame for what he did on the baseball diamond. Don’t get me wrong, he was good, but that’s not what he’s being recognized for. Nomo pitched only five seasons in Japan (all with the Kintetsu Buffaloes). He was remarkably good at the beginning of his career, posting ERAs of 2.91, 3.05, and 2.66 in his first three years. In 1993 his performance dropped off (he was slightly below average), the following year offense exploded in the Pacific League, but Nomo’s ERA was about the same as it had been the previous year, so in context he was quite a bit better than average.

As a rookie, Nomo was a huge success. He won all of the post season awards. But it was what happened during the 1994/5 off-season that won him fame. He retired. Now, of course he’s not the first player to have retired, but he was the first to realize that if he retired from Japanese baseball he wouldn’t be bound by their reserve clause anymore, and so could declare himself a free agent. Not that any Japanese team would sign him – becoming a free agent in Japan isn’t that easy. But the Dodgers would (and did) sign him.

Nomo was the first player to have ever won the rookie of the year award twice. Unless Ichiro won it in Japan, he’s the only one to have ever managed it. After he signed with the Dodgers he was an immediate success. Nomo led the league in shutouts, strikeouts, hits per nine innings, and strikeouts per nine innings. That last figure was 11.1, a number that would be excellent for a starter today, and practically unheard of in the mid 90s. Nolan Ryan only topped 11.1 K/9 twice in his career. As an American “rookie” his ERA was 2.53; remember this was during sillyball, league-wide ERA was a fair bit north of 4. Nomo wasn’t the first Japanese player to come to America, but he was the first in about thirty years. What he did was display that playing in MLB was a viable option for Japanese players. Arguably without Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki would have been a life-long member of the Orix BlueWave. (Either that or Ichiro would have been the trailblazer that Nomo in fact was.)

The honeymoon didn’t last though. Nomo was good in 96, about average in 97, and traded to the Mets in the middle of 98. He had two more good years for the Dodgers in the early 00’s, but he spent most of the rest of his career bouncing from team to team in MLB, not being especially effective for anyone. At the age of 39, after having missed two years of baseball, he tried to make a comeback with the Royals. It went about as well as a 39 year old’s comeback with the Royals, after having sat out two years, should be expected to go.

The Golden Player’s Club counts performance after a player has left Japan, and Nomo totaled just barely north of 200 wins for his career, adding Japanese and MLB totals. Hence, he’s a member of the club. But there is an element of apple-and-oranges here. The MLB season is longer than the Japanese season, so Nomo had more chances to pick up wins than a pure Japanese player would have had over the same number of seasons.

Nomo was famous for his forkball and his funky “tornado” delivery motion. Probably the closest we have today is Johnny Cueto. (Although Cueto never quite repeats the same motion twice. I like watching him pitch just for the weirdness of it.)

If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have put Nomo in the hall of fame. His Japanese career was too short, and his American career wasn’t good enough to be worth much in the way of extra credit. My first thought for an American player who would be comparable to his JPPL+MLB career was Dave McNally. That’s not fair to Nomo though, McNally’s American career was only a little better than Nomo’s. Maybe someone like Sam McDowell would be a better comparison. McDowell was a star, but nobody’s idea of a hall of famer.

Sabr has a long Nomo biography.

My card is from the 1992 BBM set. Nomo was already a star at this point, but still only 23 years old.