As the deadline for Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame ballots approaches, and people talk about who should be in the Hall of Fame — as opposed to who shouldn’t, it might be constructive to look at who are the all-time greats.

The biggest problem I find with compiling these lists is that the competition is generally better since 1990 than it was in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and even 70s. Thus, it is far more difficult to dominate play than it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago. For that reason, a straight-line numbers comparison between a recent superstar and one from 50 years ago will almost always be one-sided.

Let’s look at how many times a player has led his league in one of the following offensive categories:

• batting average
• on-base percentage
• slugging average
• doubles
• triples
• home runs
• RBIs
• stolen bases
• walks

Sadaharu Oh led his league in one of these categories 102 times. Seven of the top-10 leaders played the bulk of their careers in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This requires an adjustment to adjust for both the era and the degree to which talent is compacted.

OK. Enough talk. Here are top 20 players in career value in NPB according to Bill James’ win shares formulas and using a competition adjustment (based on the year and the standard deviation of win shares by players with 100-plus games in a season. There may be no perfect solution to this problem but this was mine).

Top Career Totals

Name	Best Season	Career High	Career Total	Avg modifier
Sadaharu Oh	1965	41.8	672.9	1.07
Katsuya Nomura	1965	37.5	526.3	1.07
Isao Harimoto	1964	34.1	496.1	1.06
Hiromitsu Ochiai	1982	35.5	466.4	0.94
Masaichi Kaneda	1958	40	459.3	1.08
Kazuhiro Yamauchi	1956	40.2	443	1.09
Shigeo Nagashima	1961	41.4	440.5	1.12
Hiromitsu Kadota	1977	35.3	434.7	1.00
Tomoaki Kanemoto	2005	38.8	434.1	0.94
Koji Yamamoto	1980	38.3	408.1	1.02

Peak value: Average of best 5 consecutive seasons

The following table represents my estimate of the players who put together the best five-season runs in NPB history.

Name	Period	Average WS	WS totals	Modifier
Sadaharu Oh	1964-1968	39.1	40, 42, 40, 37, 37	1.07
Kazuhisa Inao	1957-1961	36.0	37, 40, 40, 20, 44	1.12
Yuki Yanagita	2014-2018	35.2	31, 39, 32, 39, 36	0.93
Ichiro Suzuki	1994-1998	35.0	38, 38, 38, 33, 28	0.92
Shigeo Nagashima	1959-1963	34.8	36, 34, 41, 25, 38	1.10
Hideki Matsui	1998-2002	34.0	36, 31, 36, 32, 35	1.00
Katsuya Nomura	1964-1968	33.8	30, 38, 34, 33, 34	1.07
Hiromitsu Ochiai	1982-1986	33.0	33, 30, 35, 34, 31	0.97
Masaichi Kaneda	1954-1958	32.5	25, 35, 33, 30, 40	1.09
Shigeru Sugishita	1951-1955	32.3	27, 33, 26, 43, 33	1.03

Hall of Fame candidates

Here are the 23 candidates on this year’s players division ballot for the Hall of Fame, with their career win shares and best-five consecutive season averages and how they rank all-time in both categories:

HOF candidates 2020

Nam e	Career WS	Career Rank +	Peak 5	Peak Rank
Atsunori Inaba	302.2	43	27.3	43
Kenji Jojima*	227.2	60	26.9	46
Norihiro Nakamura	304.4	41	26.0	62
Tuffy Rhodes	319.9	32	25.8	66
Hiroki Kokubo	310.6	37	25.5	70
Alex Ramirez	247.6	84	24.6	83
Takuro Ishii	298.9	48	24.1	91
Kenjiro Nomura	243.6	89	24.1	91
Akinori Iwamura	168.1	132	24.1	91
Norihiro Akahoshi	146.2	287	20.2	175
Masumi Kuwata	191	162	19.6	199
Takeshi Yamasaki	241.1	94	18.9	237
Tomonori Maeda	262.3	72	17.9	274
Masahiro Kawai	147.6	284	15.7	379
Makoto Kaneko	179.8	185	15.5	389
So Taguchi	121.9	239	15.0	412
Shinji Sasaoka	171.7	200	14.4	447
Shinya Miyamoto	200.6	145	13.7	504
Kazuhisa Ishii	137.7	243	13.6	510
Shinjiro Hiyama	137.8	321	13.1	552
Shingo Takatsu	100	431	10.1	804

2020 Hall of Fame candidates, career win share and peak win share ranks. Career win share rank includes MLB WS for Japanese players.