Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

Choji Murata pitched for the Orions for 22 years – 1968 to 1990. He was 18 in his first taste of pro ball, and retired at 40 with a 3.24 ERA in 3331 innings. (He couldn’t manage just two more innings?) The mid-to-late 70s were his best period. During this stretch he regularly logged an ERA in the 2s with innings totals that wouldn’t be embarrassing in MLB. 1976 was his single best season: he went 21-11 with a 1.89 ERA in 257 innings.

Murata was the second Japanese pitcher to get Tommy John surgery. The arm abuse that Japanese pitchers put up with took its expected toll, and in 1982, at 32, he, like so many pitchers before him, simply couldn’t pitch anymore. He tried basically everything else that you can do to get your arm working again, including, unwisely, trying to pitch through the pain. Predictably, it didn’t work. As a 32 year old he pitched 40 innings, and then that looked like that. In a last-ditch effort he flew to LA to get ligament-replacement surgery and missed the entire 1983 season and almost all of the 1984 season. He would never again manage the kind of innings pitched that he did as a young man, but by the time he was back on the field he was in his mid-30s, so some age-related decline is to be expected. By age 35 Murata was again pitching more-or-less full-time. He was reasonably successful in 85 and 86, dipping to below-average production for a couple seasons afterwards, and then led the league in ERA in his penultimate season. The same year he was named the all-star game MVP and given a $14,000 prize. (Presumably the amount is approximate. The figure is from the AP.) If forced to pick a comparable American player, I might come up with someone like C.C. Sabathia.

He was a three-time ERA leader, but made only a single best-nine and never won a Sawamura Award.

Post-career, Murata stayed in shape. In what appears to have been a publicity stunt NPB had Kazuhiro Kiyohara-he was retired already, this was in 2013-try to hit a home run off of a few old-time pitching greats. Anyways, Murata struck him out, topping out at 83 mph. Now, 83 mph is really slow for a professional, but considering that Murata was sixty four years old at the time, I think that we can forgive him.

Here’s a short clip of Murata pitching.

The card is a Calbee, from the 1989 set. The last (I think) of the super small cards that Calbee produced in the 80s.

[nat]

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.)

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by nat

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.)

Nice, you are getting close. I'm curious, besides Sawamura, which other members of the Hall of Fame have no career contemporary cards of them?

[nat]

Rob tells me that there are no playing-days cards of Masaru Kageura, Miyoshi Nakagawa, Yukio Nishimura, Eiji Sawamura, or Masaki Yoshihara.

My want list didn't have any of the players who made the hall of fame for their amateur play on it, so there may be (almost certainly are) amateur HOFers for whom there are no vintage cards.

[nat]

Masaji Hiramatsu pitched for the Taiyo Whales for 18 years. In 1967 he broke in as a 19 year old, and he retired at 36 after the 1984 season. He was consistently very good. But the Whales… the Whales were not. Despite being a very good pitcher, Hiramatsu just barely managed a winning record: 201-196. I nominate Ted Lyons as a similar American player (although Lyons played until he was much older). In what was probably his best season he went 25-19 (both figures led the league) with a 1.95 ERA for a Whales team that managed to claw its way up to third place. But within a couple seasons they were back to fifth.

Japan in general seems to be more contact-oriented than the US, and Hiramatsu’s strike out rate doesn’t seem to be especially impressive. He was K’ing 5.5 per nine innings. Spot-checking a few seasons, it looks like his strikeout rate was slightly better than average. Likewise his control – about 2 K’s per walk for his career – was a little bit better than average. With that kind of profile, my guess is that he had some good defenders behind him.

And sure enough. I just checked the Whales’ shortstop, who would make the biggest difference for a contact-friendly pitcher. For most of Hiramatsu’s career it was a man named Daisuke Yamashita. I’d never heard of him before just now, but he is an 8x gold glove winner, and baseball-reference refers to him as a “defensive wizard at shortstop”. Yamashita isn’t in the hall of fame, but I sure hope that Hiramatsu gave him a nice tip of the cap during his acceptance speech.

Hiramatsu himself made eight all-star teams, two best-nines, and took home the Sawamura award in 1970. His trademark was his shuuto pitch – sort of a hard slider/curve which is very popular in Japan but almost unheard of in the US. It may have been the best shuuto of all time. Over time arm injuries caught up with him, however, and he had to start mixing in more pitches that are easier on the arm.

As a boy Hiramatsu had been a huge Giants fan. I get the impression that just about every baseball fan in Japan is a huge Giants fan. Anyway, he starred at the Koshien tournament in high school (his team won; and in 2018 he was invited back to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in a few of the matches) and turned down a contract with the Dragons to play in the industrial leagues. Jim Allen reports that the Giants busily tried to recruit him during this time, but once he was eligible they turned him down. Ouch. He did get a little bit of revenge: despite playing for the dismally bad Whales, he had a winning record against the Giants.

Here is a really interesting look at his delivery. The text below talks about the nature of his shuuto and how he delivered it.

My card is from the 1979 Yamakatsu set.

[seanofjapan]

There is a weird error on that card. It depicts Masaji Hiramatsu, and correctly shows the kanji for his name on the back. But the furigana version of his first name says “Seiji” instead of Masaji. The kanji can be read either way, so likely whoever wrote the card back just didn’t know how to read his name (a common problem in Japan)!

[nat]

Kazuyoshi Tatsunami was an infielder for the Dragons from 1988 to 2009. Over the course of 2586 games he accumulated 2480 hits, walked more than he struck out, and posted a batting line of 285/366/408. He wasn’t a power hitter, although he would sometimes post above-average slugging percentages. Likewise, he’d occasionally record double digit stolen bases, but it wasn’t really a part of his arsenal. In some ways he reminds me of Pete Rose. Both were versatile defensive players (Tatsunami was mostly a second baseman, but he played about three seasons worth of games at both third and short, and another 150 games in the outfield). They were both table-setter type hitters, although without much speed. Now obviously Tatsunami didn’t break Ty Cobb’s hits record, but he and Rose were the same kinds of player. Moreover, as befits a player with gap power and a long career, he is Japan’s all-time leader in doubles, with 487. (Although the shorter season must be noted, I expected the Japanese leader to have a higher mark than this: it would put him 76th in MLB, just below, among others Mel Ott, and just above Lou Brock.)

Despite being consistently very good, he was selected to only two best-nines of the course of his 22 year career. He did win a Rookie of the Year award, and several gold gloves. But he rarely led the league in any offensive category. Allen remarks that he was never the best player on his own team. On the other hand, as a veteran player in 2007 he led the Dragons to only their second Japan Series championship, and their first in more than half a century. And Albright likes him well enough, ranking him as Japan’s 48th greatest player

To all appearances, he has spent his retirement writing. Amazon has an author page for him. And while I’m not 100% sure this is the same guy, it looks like him, some of the books are about baseball, and Hiroki Nomura – one of his coauthors – was also a professional baseball player.

Tatsunami is one of the newest members of the hall of fame. And I mean new. He was elected in 2019.

My card is from the 2000 Calbee set. It’s much larger than the tiny 80s Calbee cards, but still slightly smaller than standard baseball card size. Somewhere along the line (1990?) Calbee started putting text on the front of the cards in English instead of Kanji. I don’t know why.