As expected, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who I didn’t rate as one of the top five players in the Pacific League this year, won without any help from me, one of two voters who didn’t give him a single vote of any color for him.
The big surprise in Tuesday’s complicated Awards Night was that Shoki Murakami, collected not on the CL Rookie of the Year Award in a season during which he was never once referred to as a rookie “shinjinsenshu” by the Japanese media which only refers to first-year pros as rookie, but that the league ERA leader was also was selected MVP.
It’s that time again. The day I have to dig up the votes I cast for the season’s top players at each position in Japan’s Pacific and Central Leagues.
The big news is that Yoshinobu Yamamoto got every vote cast for the PL’s top pitcher except one, that went to Yoshihisa Hirano, and that’s a story I’m keen to hear about. My guess is that the reason Hirano received a vote was that someone with poor eyesight selected No. 16 on the spreadsheet we’re given instead of No. 18, and failed to check it.
Before COVID, the combined Best-Nine, MVP and Rookie of the Year Award ballots were a kanji-writing test, since failure to get the strokes right could disqualify a vote for a player. Now they are an eye chart.
