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After Yoshinobu Yamamoto mowed down the Atlanta Braves the other night, someone posted that in his career, the right-hander was 33-0 in which his teams scored three or more runs for him.

They meant his “MLB” career, which the Dodgers clarified in their post on “Xcrement”, formerly known as Twitter. Yamamoto, of course, signed the biggest contract for a pitcher in MLB history before his “rookie” season because he was a rookie in name only.

Before signing that contract, Yamamoto turned in three-straight in which he was named the MVP of his major league and named best professional starting pitcher in his nation.

For the first time in a long time, this post got me geeking out about pro baseball, so I dug through Delta Graphs game logs and NPB box scores to find out how Yamamoto did with the Orix Buffaloes in his last four seasons. I have the other game logs in my database, but it might take me too long to blow the dust off the damn thing, so I started my count in 2020.

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For the last three weeks, I was in Nagoya covering the Asian Games , during which time I watched a bunch of baseball and softball games as well as a cricket match, canoe and kayak sprints, and teqball – which I had never heard of and which you should look up on YouTube because it’s really cool.

The only downside to the gig was that the Games’ news service owns the rights to all the quotes I gathered while credentialed at the venue, so I can’t share any of them with you.

What I can tell you is that the baseball was fun, because there were some incredibly talented players, and the atmosphere was at times electric. The gold medal game between Republic of Korea’s team of KBO stars held off a team of Japanese corporate league stars 3-1.

The corporate leaguers made it different.

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writing & research on Japanese baseball

jballallen.com

Nobody’s perfect

Another ballgame

writing & research on Japanese baseball