Here is a sample of what’s coming to jballallen.com. I am currently in the process of transforming the site’s data content to include user-searchable data tables for your reference, with much of it available only here.
The table below allows you to search for players career value for all players in Nippon Professional Baseball, including its predecessor the Japan Baseball League, as calculated using Bill James’ Win Shares.
For the uninitiated, three win shares is equivalent to one team win. The system has its detractors and has its shortcomings as does the more popular wins above replacement, but I’ll leave that for another space.
Win Shares’ flaws are largely artifacts created by the small sample sizes of fluke seasons and are mitigated to some degree when one is looking at careers.
As a teaser, here are the career value leaders for play within NPB by position:
| Name | POS | B WS | F WS | P WS | CAREER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masaichi Kaneda | P | 16.9 | 0.0 | 509.5 | 526.5 |
| Katsuya Nomua | C | 468.9 | 138.4 | 0.0 | 607.3 |
| Sadaharu Oh | 1B | 675.4 | 41.6 | 0.0 | 717.0 |
| Shigeru Chiba* | 2B | 219.7 | 84.1 | 0.0 | 303.8 |
| Shigeo Nagashima | 3B | 419.6 | 62.8 | 0.0 | 482.4 |
| Hayato Sakamoto | SS | 271.9 | 110.3 | 0.0 | 382.2 |
| Isao Harimoto | OF | 490.2 | 42.8 | 0.0 | 533.0 |
| Kazuhiro Yamauchi | OF | 385.8 | 61.7 | 0.0 | 447.5 |
| Koji Yamamoto | OF | 339.5 | 64.1 | 0.0 | 403.6 |
| Hiromitsu Kadota | DH | 412.2 | 28.8 | 0.0 | 440.8 |
*–The career value leader for players who spent most of their careers at second base is Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, with 315.2, followed by Hideto Asamura at 310.3, but neither played more than 1,300 games at second. I picked Chiba based on his overwhelming defensive superiority at second in his 1,415 games. Morimichi Takagi (294.6) was fourth overall despite playing over 2,000 games at second.
Of course, these valuations don’t reflect any part of the careers spent in America… For the full searchable table, read on.
The table below with every player in NPB history, gives each player’s main defensive position other than pitcher based on maximum career value.
A reminder, this site follows the Hepburn romanization style used by the English-language media in Japan, which treats long and short vowels in Japanese names as the same, so “小野” and “大野” are both rendered as “Ono,” and Shohei Ohtani is given as “Shohei Otani.”
