On Saturday in Japan, Orix’s Elmore Leonard gang stole the Lions lunch money, while Munetaka Murakami continues to swing for the fences and beyond.
The home run was Murakami’s 148th, moving him past Kazuhiro Kiyohara on the list of career home runs by a 22-year-old. He is now second on the list and 30 behind Kiyohara for career homers by a 23-year-old, and third behind Kiyohara (212) and Sadaharu Oh (180) for career homers by a 24-year-old.
If you want a refresher course on every overgeneralization attributed to Japanese baseball, have a listen to Ben Verlander does Japanese baseball. Verlander is currently in Japan marveling at the game we know and love, and I guess it’s kind of fun to remember what it was like the first time we saw it.
Let’s get to the games shall we?
Saturday’s games
Buffaloes 6, Lions 0: At Seibu Dome, the Lions got run over by the 8:20 to Yuma, as the Elmore Leonard gang, Yuma Mune and Yuma Tongu, rode again to back the eight shutdown innings from Hiroya Miyagi (8-6), lifting the defending champs to within 1-1/2 games of the first-place Lions.
The Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday announced the winners of its annual ballots, and the hall’s reputation as a popularity contest was confirmed for another year.
For the first time since it was created in 2008, the player’s division voters failed to elect anyone as last year’s runner-up, Shingo Takatsu, fell seven votes short of selection. Popular DeNA BayStars manager Alex Ramirez, the only imported player with 2,000 hits shot up the leaderboard to finish second in the ballot with 233 of the 266 votes needed for selection.
Tuffy Rhodes, easily the best player on the player’s division ballot, took a slight step backward. A year ago, he was named on 29.6 percent of the ballots, this year on 28.8 percent.
Ramirez is a deserving candidate and this is not a slur on his reputation, but as a player, he didn’t have as big an impact as Rhodes. Ramirez was a popular player with the Giants, while Rhodes’ time with the Giants was curtailed by injury and marred by an argument with a coach.
HOF Players Division results 2020
Name
Votes
2020 Pct
2019 pct
Career Win Shares
Shingo Takatsu
259
73.3
60.6
120
Alex Ramirez
233
65.8
40.4
248
Masahiro Kawai
218
61.6
50.7
148
Shinya Miyamoto
206
58.2
41.2
201
Kenjiro Nomura
127
35.9
37.2
244
Masumi Kuwata
121
34.2
31.5
191
Hiroki Kokubo
104
29.4
32.1
311
Tuffy Rhodes
102
28.8
29.6
320
Tomonori Maeda
102
28.8
29.6
262
Takuro Ishii
87
24.6
24.8
299
Atsunori Inaba
72
20.3
NA
302
Kenji Jojima
61
17.2
15.1
294
Takeshi Yamasaki
41
11.6
11.3
241
Shinji Sasaoka
39
11.0
10.5
172
So Taguchi
34
9.6
10.2
170
Norihiro Akahoshi
32
9.0
8.9
146
Norihiro Nakamura
28
7.9
NA
305
Shinjiro Hiyama
16
4.5
3.2
138
Kazuhisa Ishii
14
4.0
7.5
166
Akinori Iwamura
4
1.1
NA
222
Makoto Kaneko
3
0.8
NA
180
Two longtime inoffensive shortstops Masahiro Kawai and Shinya Miyamoto continued to build support, being named on 61.6 percent of the ballots and 58.2, respectively.
At the other end, Akinori Iwamura and Makoto Kaneko both dropped off the ballot on their first try, having failed to be named on 2 percent of the ballots.
HOF Experts Division Results 2020
Name
Votes
2020 Pct
2019 pct
Career Win Shares
Koichi Tabuchi
109
80.7
64.7
292
Randy Bass
89
65.9
63.2
133
Masayuki Kakefu
62
45.9
30.8
303
Keishi Osawa
49
36.3
30.1
Isao Shibata
40
29.6
26.3
261
Tokuji Nagaike
37
27.4
17.3
216
Hideji Kato
28
20.7
19.5
286
Masayuki Dobashi
27
20.0
24.1
155
Mitsuhiro Adachi
21
15.6
14.3
204
Shigeru Takada
17
12.6
NA
167
Masataka Nashida
17
12.6
19.5
103
Akinobu Okada
16
11.9
10.5
208
Kiyoshi Nakahata
15
11.1
10.5
148
Yoshinori Sato
14
10.4
NA
175
Hiromu Matsuoka
12
8.9
7.5
233
Mitsuo Tatsukawa
11
8.1
NA
110
In the expert’s division, slugging catcher Koichi Tabuchi got his overdue reward, while another popular former Hanshin Tiger, two-time triple crown winner Randy Bass, moved to the top of the division’s pecking order with 65.9 percent of the vote.
The good news from Japan’s equivalent of the veteran’s committee was that Masayuki Kakefu moved up from an embarrassing 30.8 percent of the vote last year to 45.9 percent and will be poised to go in after Bass is elected a year from now.
