Japanese Baseball Cards: Current Events

Showing posts with label Current Events. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

2024 Award Winners

NPB announced their major award winners today and the league MVPs were Tomoyuki Sugano of the Giants and Kensuke Kondoh of the Hawks.

2024 BBM 1st Version #084

2024 BBM 1st Version #232

The Rookies of the Year were Hiromasa Funabasama of the Giants and Natsuki Takeuchi of the Lions:

2024 BBM 2nd Version #434

2024 BBM 2nd Version #558

Funabasama continues the tradition of at least one of the Rookies of the Year not appearing in BBM's 1st Version set - this is the fourth straight year that's happened. Takeuchi is the first Pacific League ROY winner to win the award in their first year as a pro (and therefore have the "rookie" icon on the front of their card) since Sosuke Genda in 2017.

There was no Sawamura Award given out this year despite several pitchers putting up very good numbers.

The Best 9 awards were announced yesterday. Here are the Central League winners:

2024 Epoch NPB #087

2024 Topps NPB #37

2024 Epoch NPB #101

2024 Epoch NPB #098

2024 Epoch NPB #130

2024 Epoch NPB #128

2024 Epoch NPB #134

2024 Epoch NPB #162

2024 Epoch NPB #021

And the Pacific League winners:

2024 Epoch NPB #229

2024 Epoch NPB #210

2024 BBM Hawks #H48

2024 Epoch NPB #264

2024 Epoch NPB #241

2024 Epoch NPB #237

2024 Epoch NPB #269

2024 Epoch NPB #242

2024 Epoch NPB #240

2024 BBM 2nd Version #588

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

2023 Award Winners

NPB announced their major award winners today and Shoki Murakami of the Tigers and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Buffaloes were the MVPs of the Central and Pacific Leagues respectively. Yamamoto has become just the third player in NPB history to win an MVP award three straight years. Oddly enough the two previous players to do it played for the same franchise - Hisashi Yamada for the Hankyu Braves in 1976-78 and Ichiro for the Orix BlueWave in 1994-96.

2023 BBM 2nd Version #361

2023 BBM 1st Version #005

Murakami also won the Central League Rookie Of The Year award along with Shunpieta Yamashita of the Buffaloes. Murakami is just the third player to win the MVP and Rookie Of The Year awards in the same season (but the first Central League player to do it) following Isamu Kida of the Fighters in 1980 and Hideo Nomo of the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1990.

2023 BBM 2nd Version #CM61

2023 BBM 2nd Version #337

Just a quick aside - I've written in the past about how it's not unusual for BBM to not have a 1st or 2nd Version of one or both Rookies Of The Year. That didn't happen this year as both players were in 2nd Version but those were the ONLY flagship cards either player had this year. Topps based the player selection in their NPB set completely on last year and Calbee not only dropped Series Three this year but they cut the number of "regular" player cards in Series One and Two from 72 to 60 in each Series. I'm not sure why Epoch didn't include either of them in their NPB set though.

The Best 9 award winners were announced yesterday. Here's the Central League winners:

2023 Epoch NPB #254

2023 Epoch NPB #339

2023 Epoch NPB #309

2023 Epoch NPB #271

2023 Epoch NPB #274

2023 Epoch NPB #308

2023 Epoch NPB #316

2023 Epoch NPB #385

2023 Epoch NPB #423

You may have noticed something interesting - while Shoki Murakami was MVP of the Central League, he was NOT the winner of the Best 9 award for pitcher.

Here's the Pacific League Best 9 winners:

2023 Epoch NPB #005

2023 Epoch NPB #018

2023 Epoch NPB #020

2023 Epoch NPB #128

2023 Epoch NPB #023

2023 Epoch NPB #025

2023 Epoch NPB #061

2023 Epoch NPB #210

2023 Epoch NPB #063

2023 Epoch NPB #166

Despite his card saying he was a catcher and his photo showing him wearing the tools of ignorance, Yuma Tongu was the Best 9 winner for first base.

Lastly a few weeks back Yoshinobu Yamamoto was announced as the Sawamura Award winner. Like the MVP Award, this was Yamamoto's third straight Sawamura Award. He's only the second player to win three straight with Masaichi Kaneda being the first from 1956-58.

2023 BBM 2nd Version #377

Saturday, November 26, 2022

2022 Award Winners

NPB announced most of their major awards earlier this week. For the second straight year the league MVPs were Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Orix Buffaloes and Munetaka Murakami of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. It was the first time that both MVPs repeated since 1977 when Sadaharu Oh of the Giants and Hisashi Yamada of the Hankyu Braves did it.