Japanese HOF Project

[nat]

The results of the voting of the Japanese hall of fame were announced a few days ago. And, unlike last year, they actually elected a player this year. Two players, in fact. Both were recent players, so no cool old menko are coming your way. But a couple new posts are. First up: Masahiro Yamamoto got the call.

Yamamoto is already in the mekyukai, so this will be my second post about him. First one here.

He retired in 2015, so I think this was his second year of eligibility for the hall. Which isn’t bad. The Japanese hall, even more than the American one, likes to make players wait for induction.

Yamamoto was occasionally a great pitcher, and was a pitcher, of one sort of another, for an exceptionally long time. He pitched his first two-thirds of an inning with the Dragons at age 20, in 1986, and made his last appearance for them in 2015, at age 50. My last post about him covered the high points of his career, so what I want to do with this post is compare him to some American players.

The only American players to have appeared in an MLB game after their 50th birthday are:

Satchel Paige (age 59)
Charlie O’Leary (age 58)
Nick Altrock (57)
Jim O’Rourke (54)
Jack Quinn (50)
And String Bean Williams appeared in a Negro League game at 52 (after being a 50 year old rookie a couple years previously).

Now, some asterisks are involved here. Paige’s age 59 appearance was a publicity stunt arranged by Charlie Finley. His last appearance in MLB on his merits was at the sprightly young age of 46. O’Leary retired after the 1913 season at age 37, and then had a pinch hitting appearance in 1934. (And got a single, not bad for an old man.) But it was just one at bat. Nick Altrock’s chronologically advanced MLB appearances were publicity stunts. Altrock was as famous for his clowning as his playing. I presume he was a fan favorite. Although he appeared in games every few seasons for years, the last time he was on an MLB roster for what he could do to help his team win appears to have been during his age 32 season (which would have been 1909). New hall of famer Minoso’s post-age-50 appearances (1976 and 1980) were also publicity stunts. Fellow hall of famer Orator Jim O’Rourke played one game for the Giants at age 54; he had retired ten years earlier. It was also a publicity stunt. The Giants were about to clinch their first pennant since 1889, and John McGraw gave O’Rourke, a member of that 1889 team, one last MLB appearance.

Jack Quinn was different. He was active continuously from age 34 through age 50 (he broke into the majors at 25, but spent the 1916 and 1917 seasons in the PCL). And he would go on to pitch a few more innings in the minor leagues over the next couple seasons. Quinn and Williams, then, are the only players to appear in a major league game past the age of 50 for any reason besides publicity stunts.

However, Yamamoto’s age 50 season also appears to have been a publicity stunt. It’s true that he was active continuously, he didn’t sit out a year, but he spent almost all of 2015 in the Western League – that is, in the minors. The Dragons promoted their long-time star to pitch two games, totaling one and a third innings. That looks like a publicity stunt to me. That means that his last merited JPL appearance was at age 49.

MLB players to have appeared in a game after their 49th birthday, but before their 50th:

Hoyt Wilhelm
Jimmy Austin
Arlie Latham
Jamie Moyer
Hughie Jennings
Julio Franco

Wilhelm was a great pitcher who was at the end of the line at 49. He pitched 25 non-publicity-stunt innings. Austin played in one game at 49, one at 46, and one at 45. He was a coach with the Browns, and they allowed him to get into a game every once in a while, for old time’s sake. As with O’Rourke, McGraw was instrumental in getting Latham into a game in his geriatric years. Latham was a coach for the Giants, and McGraw put him in a few games. He got a total of two plate appearances. Doesn’t count. Jamie Moyer you know. He was legitimately playing MLB at 49. In fact, I think the Orioles should have given him another chance. They cut him after 16 innings in AAA with a 1.69 ERA. Obviously he wasn’t a building block for the future, but he threw 16 of the more effective innings on the team, and it’s not like the 2012 Orioles really needed to give relief innings to Randy Wolf. Anyways. Hughie Jennings probably needs no introduction to a board dedicated to pre-war baseball. He was the manager of the 1918 team, and put himself into a game. Julio Franco, on the other hand, was legitimately playing big-league ball at 49. After the Mets released him mid-season, the Braves even saw fit to sign him and put him at first base. So, age-wise, that’s the company that Yamamoto is keeping: Hoyt Wilhelm, Jamie Moyer, and Julio Franco.

Comparing Japanese starters to American relievers is going to be difficult. I can’t tell you if Yamamoto or Wilhelm was the greater player. Yamamoto pitched 1000 more innings than did Wilhelm, so I guess that’s what I’d use to make the decision. But he’s obviously better than the other two. Would that I’m able to do my job longer than almost anyone else ever.

Of course, retiring would be nice too.


Meikyukai: YES – Hall of Fame: YES

1992 BBM

[Exhibitman]

You forgot HOFer Minnie Minoso

[John1941]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

You forgot HOFer Minnie Minoso

No, he said that they were publicity stunts. I love Minnie, but that's probably a correct evaluation.

[nat]

Shingo Takatsu is the other player who was elected to the hall of fame this year. He was a relief pitcher who spent the Japanese portion of his career with Yakult. But he’s sort of a cosmopolitan guy. In 2004 and 2005 he pitched for the Chicago White Sox and (very briefly) the New York Mets. After that he returned to Yakult for a couple years, before spending his age 39 season playing for the Woori Heroes in Korea, his age 40 season with Fresno (the San Francisco Giants’ AAA affiliate), and then his age 41 season with the Sinon Bulls in Taiwan. But even then he wasn’t done. After his stint in Taiwan, Takatsu returned to Japan to play in the Baseball Challenge League – their version of Indy ball. Dude gets around.

He has a low delivery point, varying between sidearm and genuine submarine. His specialty is the ability to precisely locate his wide variety of sinkers. But he doesn’t have any heat to back these sinkers up, topping out in the mid 80s.

He has two claims to fame in Japan. The first is—or rather, was—holding the all-time saves record. It had previously belonged to Kaz Sasaki. Although Takatsu’s mark would latter be broken. The second was not allowing a run 11 Japan Series games. For this latter feat he was nicknamed “Mr. Zero.”

Relief pitchers rarely impress me, and Takatsu is no exception. He pitched 950 innings in his career, which is maybe four seasons from a top starting pitcher today, to say nothing of historical examples. (Check out Hiroshi Gondo’s 1961 season. He threw about half of Takatsu’s career innings in one season.) It’s just extremely difficult to make much of a difference to your team when you’re pitching 60 innings a year. Mariano Rivera, the greatest relief pitcher ever, managed to accrue only 56.3 WAR, which is good for 79th all-time among pitchers. One slot below Tim Hudson, who got all of 3% in the hall of fame vote that was announced yesterday. Now look, 56 WAR isn’t bad, it’s more than Waite Hoyt or Early Wynn managed. But it’s very “meh” for a hall of famer. And, AND, it’s aided by a leverage multiplier, which gives relief pitchers a bonus for pitching in late-and-close games. (It multiplies WAR earned in such games.) Philosophically, I think that including leverage in WAR (or any other serious attempt to measure a player’s value) is a mistake. A run that’s scored in the first inning counts just as much as a run that’s scored in the 9th inning, and if it ends up being a close game, then a lot depended on that first inning run, just like a lot depends on a 9th inning run. Leverage tells you how exciting a player’s appearance was, but it’s irrelevant to how much it mattered. Given how few innings they pitch, it’s just not possible for a relief pitcher to be very valuable. Compare Takatsu to the guy he was elected with, Masahiro Yamamoto. Yamamoto pitched 3600 innings in his career. Given that he pitched about 1/4th as many innings as Yamamoto, to equal Yamamoto’s value, Takatsu would need to pitch about 4x better than him. Suffice it to say that he didn’t. (Consider that his ERA is only 10% than Yamamoto’s.)

Anyhow, even for a relief pitcher, Takatsu doesn’t impress me much. He broke Sasaki’s saves record, but it seems clear that Sasaki was the better pitcher. Sasaki’s lifetime (Japanese) ERA is 2.41, whereas Takatsu’s is 3.20. And they were active for almost exactly the same years, so it’s not like Sasaki was benefiting from an easier context. Takatsu was good in his first taste of MLB (credit where it’s due, he came in second in rookie of the year voting, finishing behind Bobby Crosby), but bad the next year (ERA north of 5), and that was it for his MLB career. Lets compare him to the other relief pitchers in the Japanese hall of fame. Hitoki Iwase, who would break Takatsu’s saves record, had a career 2.31 ERA, and the wildly unqualified Tsunemi Tsuda had a 3.31 mark (but is really in the hall for the three seasons in which he managed an average ERA of about 1.75). Now, Takatsu did have a few big years, and played in a somewhat tougher context than did Tsuda, but among the very few relief pitchers in the Japanese hall, the only one that to whom he compares at all favorably is the one who isn’t qualified by any standard, and who got elected after tragically dying young of brain cancer.

I assume you can tell that I’m not a fan. But don’t take it too seriously. I’m not a fan of any relief pitcher.

After retiring from the Indy league, Takatsu got a gig coaching for Yakult, and eventually moved up to the top position, taking over as manager in 2020. They didn’t do well in 2020, but in 2021 they won the Japan series, and Takatsu took home the Matsutaro Shoriki Award, as the person who contributed the most to Japanese baseball during the year in question. (Special Shoriki awards were given to Shohei Ohtani and Atsunori Inaba in 2021. Ohtani you know about, Inaba’s was due to his work with the Japanese National Team.)

Takatsu is a member of both the mekyukai and the hall of fame. Accordingly, I need two of his cards. Since he’s one of the few modern mekyukai members whose cards I didn’t have before, I’ve decided to feature both cards in this post. Below you will find his 1991 and 1993 BBM cards.

[nat]

Shigeru Mizuhara

Some time ago Frank and I traded some cards. I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on them for, well, ever since the trade. But I’ve been busy with this and that and something else. Going to rectify that today though. Or, least, take one step towards it.

The biggest card in the trade was this: JRM 42 Shigeru Mizuhara.

This is my first pre-war hall of famer. With a few exceptions, post-war HOFers aren’t too hard to find. But pre-war are a different story. They turn up in Prestige auctions sometimes, and I put in a few bids on the last one, but didn’t win anything. So I’m happy to have this guy.

Now, this isn’t my first Mizuhara card. I wrote about the other one here. However, that card is from his days as a manager, in the post-war period. This JRM 42 card dates from c. 1930, when he was a star player for Keio University.

Mizuhara’s parents divorced when he was young, which doesn’t seem to have had any salutary effects on him. It seems that he started playing baseball as a distraction from an unhappy home life. He was high school teammates with Saburo Miyatake, and the two future hall of famers led Takamatsu Commercial High School to victory at Koshien twice. For many people, just participating at Koshien is the highlight of their lives, but Mizuhara and Miyatake actually won the thing more than once. After finishing high school, they both enrolled at Keio University, which had one of the stronger baseball programs at the time.

Although he was a great player – maybe the greatest amateur player in the days before the Japanese professional league was founded – his time with Keio was not free of drama, and ended early. The start of the trouble was a huge brawl during a game between Keio and their arch-rival Waseda University. The two schools played a tense back-and-forth game. Throughout the game there were many acrimonious calls, some of which were overturned on appeal (displeasing the team that benefited from the original call), along with much heckling. Mizuhara seems to have been at the center of many of the day’s incidents. Anyway. After the game concluded the Keio and Waseda cheering sections seem to have had enough of each other, someone from Waseda threw a half-eaten apple at Mizuhara, which he threw back at the Waseda fans, and the stadium descended into generalized combat. It was front-page news.

So, Mizuhara was already under something of a cloud. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested for illegal gambling while playing mahjong, and Keio had had enough. They cut their biggest star, and his college baseball career was over.

In 1936, when the Japanese professional league was founded, Mizuhara joined the Giants. He played pro ball through 1942. (Mostly at second base, but he also pitched a little bit.) Just as his college career was abbreviated, however, so was his pro career. After the 1942 season he joined the war effort, and eventually found himself as a prisoner of war in Siberia. (Rumor is that he taught the Russians how to play baseball.) When the war ended and he returned to Japan, the Giants welcomed him back, but extreme malnutrition during his time as a POW precluded a resumption of his baseball career. He transitioned, instead, to a managerial role, and led the Giants to their first stretch of postwar dominance. It’s for his work as a manager that Mizuhara is enshrined in the hall of fame.

(Most of the preceding comes from Mizuhara’s Japanese Wikipedia page.)

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As noted, this card is from the JRM 42 set, issued around 1930. The set has an R5 designation, and for a card that is that rare, I know of a surprisingly large number of these. Sean has one. Prestige sold one in 2016 (which is the same card that was used as the example in Engel’s guide), they sold a different one in 2018,
and then there’s mine.

There are two versions, one with the K over a solid red background, and one with the K over a yellow-and-red grid. Three of the four (all except the 2016 card) have the grid behind the K.

[John1941]

That's a very cool story, and a nice looking card.

I love how four known examples is relatively a lot.

[seanofjapan]

Hey awesome, I’m glad you found a copy of that Mizuhara too!

With at least four of them out there, I wonder if it might become an R4 in the near future!