Japanese HOF Project

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Hitoki Iwase was a Chunichi relief pitcher from 1999 through 2018. From 2004 to 2014 he was a closer, and he collected 407 saves in his career (thereby qualifying for the Meikyukai). He holds Japan’s all-time record for saves.

Iwase was good, as a career 2.31 ERA attests. It is, however, important to remember that relief pitchers always have lower ERAs (on average) than do starting pitchers. Popular speculation is that this is because they can put everything they’ve got into each pitch, knowing that they’re only going to pitch an inning or two. And as you expect from a relief pitcher, Iwase didn’t pitch much. He totaled 985 innings pitched in 1005 games (so, even less than one inning per appearance). My guess is that 2002 was his best season. That year Iwase posted a career-best 1.06 ERA over 59 innings. A few years earlier he did pitch 80 innings to the tune of 1.90 ERA, and while that mark is very good, it’s still almost double his 2002 figure. In 2002 he was still pitching in middle relief – he was setting up for Eddie Gaillard, who was mostly unsuccessful in a short MLB career, but who would go on to have three solid years pitching in Nagoya. Gaillard left the team (probably traded?) mid-way through 2003, but Iwase still didn’t get the closing gig. Akinori Otsuka took over after Gaillard left. I’m not convinced that Otsuka was a better option than Iwase, but, anyways, the next year Otsuka went to pitch for the Padres and Iwase finally got the top spot in the Dragons’ bullpen. And ‘finally’ is a good word to use here: Iwase was 29 when he inherited the spot. He would pitch until he was 43.

Maybe the hesitancy involved in giving him the closers spot was due to the that he’s left handed. Left handed pitchers are usually at a platoon disadvantage, and managers seems to be loath to give up the platoon advantage when bringing in a relief pitcher. If he’s good enough (e.g. Aroldis Chapman) it can, however, be worthwhile.

Iwase was a part of the first Dragons team to win the Japan Series in half a century in 2007. He was, during the series, brought in as a relief pitcher in the 9th inning of a perfect game. I can’t imagine the guts involved in removing a pitcher in the 9th inning of a perfect game. (Or even what the manager must be thinking. It’s not like the guy has painted himself into a corner or something – there’s nobody on base! He must have just really lost his command or was visibly tired or something. It was Hiromitsu Ochiai managing, if somebody is going to do something daring and controversial, it's him.) Anyhow, it ended well. Iwase did not allow a runner, preserved the perfect game, and won the Series. The Dragons were good during his time with them, appearing in the Japan Series six times. They managed, however, to win only in 2007.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of fame: No YES - as of 2025

2002 BBM

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Tadahito Iguchi played from 1997 to 2017, mostly at second base. He broke in as a 22 year old with the Daiei Hawks, with whom he stayed until 2005, when he signed with the White Sox. Position players imported from Japan mostly do not have a good track record in the US, but Iguchi was more successful than most. He was already past his prime, but still put in a couple years playing a solid second base on the south side. Mid 2007 he found himself traded to the Phillies. They released him at the end of the year, and he signed with the Padres. Most of the way through a poor 2008, they released him and he returned to the Phillies for their stretch run. In 2009 he went back to Japan, joining the Chiba Lotte Marines this time. (His initial contract upon his return to Japan was a three-year deal for about $6m total.) He had some good years left, but looks to me like he was a minor star for the balance of his career. In Japan he collected 1760 hits, but the 494 that he recorded in MLB put him over the top as far as Meikyukai membership is concerned.

As a young man, Iguchi had good power and very good speed. In 2001 (age 26) he hit 30 home runs and stole 44 bases. But his best season was probably 2003, in which he hit 27, stole 42, and posted a slash line of 340/438/573. That slugging percentage was an outlier, he was usually in the mid-400s before coming to the States, and ended up with a 268/338/401 line. Reportedly his success in 2003 was due to a change in approach: instead of trying to pull the ball, he started going the other way. If true, it’s a bit odd, as his slugging didn’t suffer any. Usually you hit for more power to your pull side.

Although his MLB career was brief, it was eventful. Iguchi managed a seven RBI game, that, incredibly, his team lost. He was also a member of the 2005 World Champion White Sox, hitting a crucial playoff home run along the way. As a member of the Marines he won the Japan Series. And as an Olympian he took home a silver medal.

If you’re looking for a comparable American player, you need a middle infielder with moderate power, good speed, and a long career. Julio Franco comes to mind. So does Paul Molitor. They were the same kind of player (even if Molitor was better). Neither one is a perfect match. Iguchi ended up moving to first base eventually, but he stayed at an important defensive position longer than did Molitor. But I think that Molitor was the better hitter. On the other hand, Iguchi clearly had more power than Franco.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

I’m not super happy with the card. It’s from the 2013 BBM set, but it’s a card celebrating the history of the Hawks franchise. So although Iguchi was on the Marines at the time that the card was printed, it shows him on the Hawks. Some day I’m sure I’ll get around to shelling out ~$2 for a different Iguchi card.

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Yasunori Oshima was a 1B/OF who played mostly for Chunichi (and a while with the Fighters) from 1971 to 1994. He had a very long career, but many of his seasons were abbreviated, and indeed failed to clear 100 hits in many seasons. That makes Meikyukai membership all the more impressive. Lots of players just barely qualify – it seems likely to me that they hang on just to get their 2000th hit – but Oshima got up to 2200. No threat to Harimoto or anything, but it looks like he was active for four seasons after qualifying for the Meikyukai. He had power (382 career home runs) but no speed; about what you expect from a corner outfielder/first baseman. Oshima’s best season was 1979, in which he hit 36 home runs, drove in 103, posted a 317/376/603 line, and recorded 302 total bases. Pretty good given a 130 game season. Superficially he reminds me of David Justice, but the fact that Oshima played ten years longer than did Justice suggests that he’s not the best comp.

Some of the part-time seasons were due to taking a long time to find a regular gig with the Dragons. He was originally drafted as a pitcher. Many of his early seasons involved a lot of pinch hitting. So even if he was appearing in nearly all of his team’s games, he still wasn’t getting a whole lot of playing time.

The trade from Chunichi to Nippon Ham was for Tomio Tanaka and Tatsuo Omiya. Tanaka was a lousy starting pitcher. Omiya was a catcher who had been decent, but by 1987 was a rather poor back up. Oshima was quite old at this point. I guess Nippon Ham got the better end of the deal – neither of the guys they gave up were any good – but it wasn’t the most consequential of trades.

Oshima ranks in the top 20 in a bunch of offensive categories, but that’s mostly a result of his extraordinarily long career. He was good – don’t get me wrong – but he wasn’t the kind of transcendent talent you think of when someone tells you that he’s top 20 in hits (and 22nd in home runs). He was a multi-time all-star, but never made a best-nine.

As near as I can make out from his Japanese Wikipedia page, Oshima had been a fan of sumo and the Hanshin Tigers when he was a child. Despite his affection for the Tigers, it was the Dragons who drafted him, and after he was drafted it was Shigeru Mizuhara who turned him into a position player. Post-retirement he managed the Fighters briefly and unsuccessfully, and served as a baseball commentator.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1977 Calbee

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It’s time for another menko.

This is post #2 about Minoru Murayama. The card below is for my Meikyukai collection. (Previous post here.)

My previous post covers Murayama pretty well (and bio on thehanshintigers.com does it even better), so this one is just a few tidbits I uncovered, plus a card.

• The Giants offered him a signing bonus of 4x what the Tigers offered, but Hanshin also promised lifetime employment if the baseball thing didn’t work out, so he turned down the Giants’ money.

• He was the first professional Japanese athlete to sign a deal (as a member of their advisory staff) with a sporting goods company (SSK Baseball Products). He continued to help them develop baseball equipment into the 1970s.

• His #11 is one of only three numbers retired by the Tigers (Fujimura #10, Yoshida #23)

• He led the league in ERA three times – including his penultimate season, to go along with twice leading the league in wins, and three times each in CG, SHO and IP.

• Albright ranks him as the 64th best player in Japanese history. And while I haven’t gone though his list in detail, my initial reaction is that that seems low.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: Yes

My card is from the JCM 14g set. It was issued in 1964, so towards the end of the tobacco-menko era. There are a number of “families” of menko cards, and JCM 14 is one of the larger. It has a bunch of sets that were released between 1959 and 1964 that are very similar to each other. JCM 14f is one of the sets that was imported into the US; the primary difference between this set and that one (besides the checklist) is that 14f has the team name printed on the back of the card. Some of the sets in this family are hard to get ahold of, but this one isn’t.

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Here’s a Hideki Matsui card for the Meikyukai collection. (Earlier write-up here.)

As I suspect anyone reading this knows, Matsui defected from Yomiuri after the 2002 season, signing with the Yankees. He stayed with them through 2007, after which he spent a few seasons with the Angels/A’s/Rays to finish out his career. When he left Japan, Matsui had 332 career home runs and 1390 hits. He added 1253 hits and 175 home runs on this side of the Pacific.

What I want to do today is estimate what his career would have looked like if he hadn’t left Japan. Of course you can’t actually know this, but an educated guess is possible. Here’s how I’m going to do it. The Davenport Translation of his 1996 is about 25% better than his actually 2003 MLB performance. So I’m going to take his actual 1996 stats, and reduce them by 25%, and use that as his projected 2003. After that I’m going to find changes in his actual performance from year to year, and adjust his projected performance by the same amount. So, say that his performance from one year to the next decreased by x%. I’m going to take his projected performance for the first year, and multiply it by 1-x to get his projected performance for the next year. That way his projected aging pattern matches his actual aging pattern.

My calculations give him an additional 803 hits and 312 home runs, for career totals of 2193 hits and 644 home runs. Fewer hits because the season is shorter, but more home runs, because Japanese players tend to lose a lot of power when they come to MLB. If this is right he would still have gotten Meikyukai membership, and would have ended up third all-time for home runs in Japan. It also gives him a career slash line of 297/399/611. There are some oddities of this little system that aren’t especially believable. Most notably, the fact that his home run total doubled from 2003 to 2004 makes his 2004 projection a bit screwy. But this is just for fun, so it’s good enough.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame – Yes

1999 Calbee SP. This set is a premium that you could only get by sending in “winner” cards from packs of Calbee chips.

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Makoto Matsubara was mostly a first baseman (also sometimes a third baseman) who played 1962 to 1980 with Taiyo, and a few games in 1981 with the Giants. He seems to have originally been a catcher, and appeared in at least one game at every infield position, and also spent 49 games in the outfield. For his career he totaled 2095 hits, 331 home runs, and a 276/330/465 line. On the face of it those numbers don’t seem too good, but he was playing a relatively low-offense league. In context, he was a star. Matsubara made 11 all-star teams, but having to compete with Oh and Nagashima kept him out of the best nine.

He had the misfortune of spending most of his career with the Whales. They were to the Central League as the St. Louis Browns were to the American League. They managed a couple second-place finishes, but a plurality of the seasons in which he played for them they finished fifth. In his one season with the Giants, however, they won the Japan Series (of course).

Since retirement Matsubara has been active with the Meikyukai. In particular, he been working with the Meikyukai to popularize baseball around southeast Asia. As of 2017 he was working with local teams in Malaysia.

And here’s a tumblr page with a whole bunch of Mastubara cards on it.

Meikyukai: Yes – Hall of Fame: No

1976 Calbee. It’s from a “then-and-now” style subset.

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Here's my original post about Kadota.

Kadota was an outfielder for the first half of his career, and a DH for the second half. He played for Nankai from 1970 to 1988, Orix in 89 and 90, and Daiei in 91 and 92. He's weird in a bunch of ways. Or, rather, he's weird in that he seems to be impervious to the laws of aging, and this manifests itself in a bunch of ways.

He was good as a young man. And good (perhaps even better, although eyeballing the adjustments necessary to account for changing context is hard) when he was an old man. And good even as a very old man. He had an above average OPS at the age of 44.

Consistency is really valuable. Hank Aaron was a great player, but what made him a GREAT player is that he never had an off year. (Cf. also Mike Trout) Kadota was the same way.

I was trying to think of a comparable American player, but there aren't any good fits. He's got Aaron's consistency. And he was a huge slugger. But Aaron played a good right field, whereas Kadota was a DH. But there aren't any American DHs, or even first basemen, that, in context, hit like Kadota did. If you adjust his HR totals for differences in the length of the American vs. Japanese season, you end up with 680. There are no good matches up that high in the US. Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth were better fielders. Rodriguez was an infielder. Mays was a much better fielder. Pujols doesn't have the consistency, neither does Sosa. Thome, although also a slugging DH, wasn't the same kind of slugging DH. Thome and Kadota played in just about the same number of games in their respective careers, but Thome's walk and HR totals are far higher. Kadota put the ball in play a lot more than he did. Frank Thomas had a better batting eye. David Ortiz isn't too bad, although Kadota hit more home runs in fewer games than did Ortiz.

Meikyukai: Yes - Hall of Fame: Yes

Two cards today. One is from 1987 Calbee, the other is 1988.