Japanese HOF Project

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Masahiro Yamamoto pitched for the Dragons from, get this, 1986 to 2015. That’s 30 years, although he missed 2011, so he actually appeared in “only” 29 seasons. To be sure, some asterisks are involved here. His 1986 and 1987 seasons combined totaled two and a third innings, and in 2015 he pitched only an inning and a third, but that’s still an astonishingly long career. Eye-balling his stats, he seems to have been sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Inconsistent, in a Steve Carlton sort of way. He compiled 219 wins, so he wasn’t hanging around for the Meikyukai. In fact, he qualified in 2008, during his age 42 season, at which point there were still seven years to go in his career. His best year looks to have been 1993, when he went 17-5 with a 2.05 ERA. It was, however, the following year that he won the Sawamura award (for the only time in his career); his ERA was much worse (3.49), but he won 19 games, and it’s rarely a mistake to assume that award voters are going to over-rate pitcher wins. (Happily this is changing in the US, but for ages it was pretty much an iron-clad law.) For his career his ERA is 3.45, over a total of 3348 innings.

Although it lasted three decades, Yamamoto’s career did not start auspiciously. He was a fifth round draft pick, and was apparently not highly regarded until coming to America. As a 22 year old he played for the Dodgers’ Vero Beach team, with whom he learned a screwball and pitched to a 2.00 ERA in 148 innings. I don’t know exactly what went on there, but a number of Japanese players spent time in American minor leagues. Maybe it’s some sort of exchange program? The Dodgers were famous for their connections to Japan, so it’s not a surprise that Yamamoto would end up in their system if he ended up anywhere, but I swear that I’ve seen players on minor league squads affiliated with other teams too. In any case, it seems clear that he was never Dodgers property, and he returned to Chunichi in time to appear in the Japan Series. (The Lions won it in five, and Yamamoto was the losing pitcher in game three.) The Dragons would win the Japan Series only once during his time with them, but for Yamamoto it must be bitter-sweet. They were the champions in 2007, but that season the 41 year old pitched terribly early in the year and was demoted to the minor league squad. So he spent three decades with the Dragons, and yet the only Japan Series that they won in that time he didn’t get to appear in.

As you might expect from a pitcher with a 30 year career, he owns most of Japan’s age-related pitching records. Most of these records had belonged to Shinji Hamasaki, who made his professional debut in 1947 at the age of 45. He managed and (every once in a while) pitched for Hankyu. I’m sure there’s a story there, but I don’t know what it is.

As you might expect, given that he was a screwball artist, Yamamoto was not a power pitcher. In the US we’d call him a “crafty lefty”. Motonobu Tanishige, his long-time catcher (and fellow Meikyukai member) once said that his “He had the special ability to make the distance to the mound seem shorter. His 130 kph pitches looked like 140”. Maybe this was meant in all seriousness, but it sounds like a burn to me. 130 kph is only 80 mph. Crank that up to 140, and you’ve got pitches that look like they’re coming in at all of 87.

Finding a comparable American player for a guy with this unusual of a career is, of course, going to be tough. The obvious choice is Jamie Moyer, but Yamamoto was a bigger star than was Moyer. He was inconsistent, but sometimes great, like Steve Carlton. But he wasn’t as great as Carlton, and as a pitcher he seems to have been more in Moyer’s mold.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: YES - elected 2022

1991 BBM. This is my only Yamamoto card, but NPB Guy has a bunch more.