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Since the turn of the century, we've seen several prominent players from Japan enter the MLB and immediately dominate, but unfortunately many of their career totals are hindered by the fact that it took so much time for them to even get the opportunity to play in the United States. Professional baseball has existed in Japan since 1936, but it wasn't until 2001 until the first Japanese-born position player appeared in Major League Baseball. What if these players had played in the US from the get-go? The immediate success of some players suggests that the level of play in Japan wasn't all that worse, but other Japanese players that transitioned have struggled more, and furthermore there have been several pretty mediocre MLB players that have gone over and played in Japan and dominated. We'll start by looking at two players whose combined US and Japan stats, taken at surface level, would almost ensure them induction into Cooperstown. Notably, Hideki Matsui has over 500 home runs in both leagues combined, and Ichiro Suzuki would be the all-time hit king using his combined league stats. Hideki Matsui played 10 years in Japan from 1993 to 2002 when he was ages 19 to 28. During his time there he amassed 1,390 hits, 332 home runs, 889 RBI, 901 runs scored, and batted .304 in 1,268 games played. In terms of awards in Japan, Matsui was a 9 time All-Star, won 3 MVPs, won 3 championships, won 1 championship MVP, and was named to the "Best Nine" 8 times, an award given to the best player at each position. He joined the New York Yankees in 2003 at age 29, and would play in the MLB for 10 years until he retired in 2012 at the age of 38. While in the MLB Matsui recorded 1,253 hits, 175 home runs, 760 RBI, 656 runs scored, and batted .282 in 1,236 games played. Awards wise, Matsui appeared in 2 All-Star games, was 2nd in Rookie of the Year voting in 2003, and won a World Series and was named the World Series Most Valuable Player in 2009. Combining his statistics in both leagues, Matsui played in 2,504 games, batted .293 for his career, and accumulated 2,643 hits, 507 home runs, 1,649 RBI, and 1,557 runs scored. If these stats were all solely achieved in the U.S., Matsui would surely be a Hall of Famer as his home runs are over the 500 mark and would place him 27th all-time, and his RBI would place him 33rd all-time. In both of these cases every player ahead of Matsui is either in the Hall of Fame, still playing, not yet eligible for the ballot, or used steroids. Matsui is already a member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, being inducted in 2018 after receiving 91.3% of the vote. Of course we can't take these career totals at face since we know that the quality of play in Japan and the U.S. isn't equal. To see how much more difficult the MLB is, we will look at Matsui's stats during his prime years on both sides of the league transition. By throwing out Matsui's first season in Japan (when he was only 19 and batted .223) we see that his batting average improves to .307 and that he averages .72 runs per game, 1.11 hits per game, .27 home runs per game, and .71 RBI per game. By throwing out Matsui's last two seasons in the MLB (when he was 37 and 38 and batted .252 and .147) we see that his batting average improves to .290 and that he averages .56 runs per game, 1.05 hits per game, .15 home runs per game, and .64 RBI per game. By dividing each of the Japan averages by the U.S. averages, we can get a factor that shows how much more difficult the U.S. playing environment was than in Japan. For example, if we divide his primal .307 Japan batting average by his primal .290 U.S. batting average we get 1.06, meaning the U.S. was about 6% more difficult in terms of batting average. The factor for runs scored is 1.48, the hits factor is 1.22, the home runs factor is 1.99, and the RBI factor is 1.27. We can now use these factors and apply them to Matsui's Japanese stats to adjust them down for the MLB playing environment. However, we also must be aware that the MLB's schedule has more games each season than the NPB's (Nippon Professional Baseball) does. While all MLB teams play a constant 162 games each season, teams in the NPB only play 143 games currently. During Matsui's playing days, the number of games per season was variable and ranged from 130 to 140. Matsui played in every single game after his first year, and even played in every game in his first 3 years in the MLB, holding the record for most consecutive games played to start a career with 518. Therefore to properly answer the question of what Hideki Matsui's stats would have looked like had he played in the MLB for his entire career, we must first adjust his Japanese stats down due to the more difficult U.S. playing environment and then adjust them up for the increased number of games. Matsui played in 43.8% of the games in his first year, so we assume he'd play in about 71 games in the U.S. From there we assume he'd play in all 162 games each season since he played in every game in Japan. Using his final year in Japan as an example, we see that in 2002 Matsui played in 140 games, scored 112 runs, recorded 167 hits, belted 50 home runs, and drove in 107 runs en route to his 3rd NPB MVP award and 3rd championship. These numbers place him at .80 runs per game, 1.19 hits per game, .36 home runs per game, and .76 RBI per game. Using the factors mentioned above we get an adjusted .54 runs per game, .98 hits per game, .18 home runs per game, and .60 RBI per game. Then we multiply these by 162 (the number of MLB games in a season) and the percentage of games Matsui played in (43.8% in 1993, 100% from 1994 to 2002). This gives Matsui a hypothetical 88 runs scored, 159 hits, 29 home runs, and 98 RBI had he played his 2002 season in the MLB. Going from 50 home runs in Japan to just 29 in the MLB is a big adjustment! We repeat this process for all Japanese seasons and get a hypothetical 733 additional runs scored, 1,377 extra hits, 200 more home runs, and 845 more RBI. Lastly, we add these hypothetical additions to Matsui's actual MLB stats and conclude that he would have recorded 1,389 runs scored, 2,630 hits, 375 home runs, and 1,605 RBI while batting .290. While the home run total is nowhere close to the 500 mark, his hit and RBI totals are much closer to his actual career totals in both leagues. These stats may not show that Matsui would have for sure been a Hall of Famer, but he certainly would have had the numbers to merit close consideration. He would be ranked 37th all-time in RBI, with everyone above him either in the Hall, still active, not yet eligible for the ballot, or a steroid user. You can view the Excel workbook that includes all of the works and steps shown for Matsui below:
Ichiro Suzuki played in Japan for 9 seasons from 1992 to 2000 when he was ages 18 to 26. While playing in the NPB, Ichiro totaled 658 runs scored, 1,278 hits, 211 doubles, 118 home runs, 529 RBI, and batted .353 in 951 games. He was a 7 time All-Star, 3 time MVP, 7 time Gold Glove winner, 7 time batting champion, won one championship, and was named to the "Best Nine" 7 times while playing in Japan. Ichiro joined the Seattle Mariners in 2001 at the age of 27 and played for 19 seasons until he retired in 2019 at the age of 45. During his time in Major League Baseball, Ichiro scored 1,420 runs, recorded 3,089 hits, smacked 362 doubles, belted 117 home runs, drove in 780 runs, and stole 509 bases in 2,653 games while batting .311. He was immediately successful, being named the Rookie of the Year and the Most Valuable Player in his first season in 2001. In his 4th season in 2004 he would break the record for most hits in a single season with 262. He was named to 10 All-Star games, won 3 Silver Sluggers, won 10 Gold Gloves, and was a 2 time batting champion. Ichiro's MLB stats in isolation are already enough to ensure his induction into Cooperstown (he ranks 24th all-time in hits and is tied for 35th all-time in stolen bases), but when combining his numbers from both leagues the results are even more staggering. In his entire career across both leagues, Ichiro batted .322 and played in 3,604 games where he recorded 2,078 runs scored, 4,367 hits, 573 doubles, 235 home runs, 1,309 RBI, and 708 stolen bases. If these stats were solely recorded in the MLB, Ichiro would rank 1st in games played, 7th in runs scored, 1st in hits, 27th in doubles, and 11th in stolen bases. These would only further staple Ichiro as one of the greatest players ever. Ichiro is not currently in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Again, we can't take Ichiro's combined stats at face value since we know that the quality of play in Japan was slightly inferior. Given Ichiro's instant and substantial success, however, we shouldn't expect the adjustment to truly be all that large. By throwing out his age 18 and 19 seasons (when he batted .253 and .188) we see that primal Ichiro in Japan had a batting average of .359 and had per game averages of .74 runs scored, 1.43 hits, .24 doubles, .13 home runs, .60 RBI, and .23 stolen bases. Similarly, by using his first 10 seasons in the MLB up until he was age 37, we see that primal Ichiro in the U.S. batted .331 and had per game averages of .66 runs scored, 1.41 hits, .16 doubles, .06 home runs, .35 RBI, and .24 stolen bases. Just like with Matsui, we divide the primal Japanese per game averages with the primal U.S. per game averages to get the adjustment factors. For Ichiro we get marginal factors of 1.08 for batting average and 1.01 for hits, as well as .94 for stolen bases, 1.13 for runs scored, 1.45 for doubles, 2.38 for home runs, and 1.71 for RBI. Essentially it was easier for Ichiro to steal bases in the MLB than in Japan, and only slightly more difficult to record hits, but much more challenging to produce extra base hits, home runs, and RBI. Ichiro wasn't quite as durable as Matsui, but he did still have 5 straight seasons from 1994 to 1998 when he played in every game in Japan, so we assume he would have played 162 games each season in the MLB. He played in 32% of the games his first year and about 34% of the games his second year, which equate to 52 and 55 games in the MLB respectively. He played in about 77% and 80% of games his final 2 years in Japan, which equate to about 125 and 130 MLB games respectively. We'll use the same process for Ichiro as we did with Matsui. For each season Ichiro played in Japan, we take his per game averages and then adjust them using the factors we calculated them above. We then multiply those adjusted per game averages by the number of MLB games we would have expected him to play to get his hypothetical additional countable statistics. It comes out that Ichiro would have added 718 runs scored, 1,552 hits, 179 doubles, 61 home runs, 380 RBI, and 262 stolen bases. By adding these to Ichiro's actual career MLB statistics, we can estimate that Ichiro would have amassed 2,138 runs scored, 4,641 hits, 541 doubles, 178 home runs, 1,160 RBI, and 771 stolen bases. Wow! Those totals would put him 1st in hits, 7th in runs scored, 38th in doubles, and 6th in stolen bases. We see that these totals track very well with his actual combined totals from both leagues, trading off less doubles, home runs, and RBI for more runs scored, hits, and stolen bases. You can view the Excel workbook that includes all the work and steps shown for Ichiro below:
Now we will look at two players who have combined stats that are somewhat worthy of at least an initial consideration for Cooperstown. Their combined US and Japan stats probably aren't actually good enough to get in, but they were good career numbers and would have at least gotten these guys on the ballot. Nori Aoki played in Japan from 2004 to 2011, in the MLB from 2012 to 2017, and again in Japan from 2018 to present. While in the U.S. he recorded 377 runs scored, 774 hits, 33 home runs, 219 RBI, and batted .285 in 759 games played. In Japan, Aoki has accumulated 954 runs scored, 1,819 hits, 137 home runs, 617 RBI, and has batted .320 in 1,475 games played. Combining his numbers from both leagues, Aoki has a total of 1,331 runs scored, 2,593 hits, 170 home runs, 836 RBI, and a combined career batting average of .309 in 2,234 games played. Since he played in the U.S. in the middle of his career we don't have a "prima" U.S. version of Aoki, but we can tack off his first and last seasons in Japan to get his primal Japan stats to use for the factor adjustments. For Aoki the adjustments are 1.14 for batting average, 1.34 for runs scored, 1.24 for hits, 2.19 for home runs, and 1.45 for RBI. Using these factors to adjust Aoki's per game averages in Japan, and then adjusting for the increased number of games in the MLB (while considering the percentage of games in Japan Aoki actually played in), we conclude that he would have reached 1,160 runs scored, 2,393 hits, 100 home runs, and 721 RBI. These numbers better show that Aoki would not be Hall of Fame worthy had he played his whole career in the MLB. Aoki has been an 8 time All-Star, 7 time "Best Nine" winner, and 7 time Gold Glove winner in Japan, but never won any accolades while playing in Major League Baseball. You can view the Excel workbook that includes all the work and steps shown for Aoki below:
Kosuke Fukudome started his career in Japan in 1999 and played there until 2007, then came overseas and played in the MLB from 2008 to 2012, and since 2013 has been playing back in Japan. In Japan he's amassed 1,040 runs scored, 1,951 hits, 285 home runs, 1,075 RBI, and batted .287 in 2,000 games played. During his stint in the MLB, Fukudome recorded 264 runs scored, 498 hits, 42 home runs, 195 RBI, and batted .258 in 595 games played. Combining his numbers from both leagues, Fukudome totals 1,304 runs scored, 2,449 hits, 327 homers, 1,270 RBI, and a .281 batting average. This gives Fukudome an impressive career hit total, but a large portion of them came from his time in Japan. Just like with Aoki, since Kosuke played in the U.S. during the middle of his career, he does not have a "primal" version of himself while playing in the MLB. He struggled in his last year in the MLB (hence his exit), as well as during his first year back in Japan, but was able to pick it up from there. Fukudome was a competent player right away in 1999, but his last two seasons in Japan have clearly been subprime, so we will remove them to get his primal self while playing in Japan. Using these primal totals with his MLB totals we can get Fukudome's factor adjustments, which are 1.23 for runs scored, 1.22 for hits, 2.13 for home runs, 1.71 for RBI, and 1.13 for batting average. Using these factors to adjust Fukudome's per game averages in Japan, and then adjusting for the increased number of games in the MLB (while considering the percentage of games in Japan Fukudome actually played in), we conclude that he would have reached 1,244 runs scored, 2,363 hits, 198 home runs, and 926 RBI. These numbers better show that Fukudome would not be Hall of Fame worthy had he played his whole career in the MLB. Fukudome won an MVP, was a 4 time "Best Nine" winner, a 4 time All-Star, and a 5 time Gold Glove winner in Japan, but only ever appeared in one All-Star game while playing in the MLB (in 2008). You can view the Excel workbook that includes all the work and steps shown for Fukudome below:
Now we'll take a look at 3 current Japanese position players in the MLB and see how they have been doing since their transition from NPB. Since these players are all pretty young we don't really care about adjusting their career stats, but rather examining how their stats in the US compare to what they were able to do in Japan. Yoshi Tsutsugo began his career in Japan at the age of 18 in 2010 and played there until 2019 when he was 27. His first four seasons saw him playing minimally and not up to par with what he produced in 2014 to 2019, so we'll only use those seasons as his primal Japanese self. Overall in Japan, Yoshi scored 515 runs, recorded 977 hits, smacked 205 home runs, and drove in 613 runs while batting .283 in 968 games. Using just his prime, Yoshi would have a .298 batting average, 462 runs scored, 846 hits, 185 home runs, and 542 RBI in 794 games. Taking these per game averages and then dividing these by his US per game averages, we get factors of 1.42 for runs scored, 1.74 for hits, 1.92 for home runs, 1.61 for RBI, and 1.43 for batting average. In his last 4 seasons in Japan, Yoshi hit 44/28/38/29 home runs, while just hitting 8 in each season in the MLB. Granted that the 2020 season was limited to just 60 games, but on a per game basis he went from belting about .25 homers per game for four straight years to about half that rate when in the MLB. He was a 5 time All-Star and 3 time "Best Nine" winner in Japan, but has yet to receive any accolades thus far in the US. You can view Yoshi's Excel workbook below:
Shogo Akiyama began his career in Japan in 2011 at the age of 23 and played there until he was 31 in 2019. In Japan it took him one year to start playing at a consistent level, so we won't include his first season in with his primal self. In total Akiyama recorded 769 runs scored, 1,405 hits, 116 home runs, 513 RBI, and batted .301 in 1,207 games played in Japan. While in the US that average has dropped to just .224, but his on-base percentage is slightly better at .320, and surprisingly higher than his slugging percentage of .274. Akiyama's lack of power in the MLB has been apparent, as he has yet to hit a home run in his two seasons played so far despite hitting at least 20 each of his last three years in Japan. The factors for Akiyama are 2.97 for runs scored, 2.44 for hits, 3.03 for RBI, 1.36 for batting average. The home run factor is literally impossible to calculate since Shogo went from hitting .1 home runs per game during his prime in Japan to hitting 0 per game in the US. The best I could do was to adjust his MLB home runs per game up to .01, which makes the factor a high 10.48. Shogo was a 5 time All-Star, 4 time "Best Nine" winner, and 6 time Gold Glover in Japan. He has yet to win any awards in the MLB, but was named a Gold Glove finalist in 2020. You can check out Shogo's Excel workbook below:
Last but certainly not least of the current players is the wondrous Shohei Ohtani, who first played in Japan at age 18 in 2013 and stayed there until he was 22 in 2017. It's somewhat difficult to determine what Shohei's prime was in Japan, as he was pretty young his entire time there. He only batted in about half of all his team's games in his first 3 seasons, and only put up decent numbers in his second season. He batted in about three quarters of his team's games in year 4 and put up great numbers, and also put up solid numbers in year 5 despite batting in less than half the games. Of course, Ohtani's batting appearances in games were limited due to the fact that he was also used as a pitcher. I've decided to just use Ohtani's stats from his last 2 seasons in Japan as his Japanese primal self, and used all of his MLB seasons so far for his US primal self. Ohtani's factors are unique in that some of them are actually below 1, suggesting that it was more difficult playing in Japan than in the US. His factors are .94 for runs scored, 1.15 for hits, .8 for home runs, .99 for RBI, and 1.23. These factors aren't too surprising given that only 2 Japanese seasons were used, but including his earlier seasons would have only amplified these factors. Ohtani hit 22 home runs in Japan in 2016, and then hit 22 and 18 homers in the US in 2018 and 2019, and after a poor year in 2020, exploded for a whopping 46 dingers in 2021. While in Japan, Ohtani was an All-Star 5 times, named to the "Best Nine" 3 times (twice as a pitcher and once as a DH), and won the MVP in 2016 when in addition to his 22 homers he batted .322 while posting a 1.86 ERA and striking out 174 batters. While in the US, Ohtani has won a Rookie of the Year, a Silver Slugger, been an All-Star (as both a pitcher and a DH) and won the MVP in 2021 when in addition to his 46 homers he led the league in triples and had a 9-2 record with a 3.18 ERA. You can view Shohei's Excel workbook below:
In conclusion, we've seen some players like Ichiro, Ohtani, and Matsui come over from Japan and be immediately successful in Major League Baseball, but others such as Aoki and Fukudome have only been decent, and Tsutsugo and Akiyama have struggled. So how does playing in Japan compare to playing in the US? Let's take a look at each player's environmental factors one more time, as well as the total average factors among these players.
Since Shogo's factors were so unlike all of the other players' besides for batting average, none of his factors were included when calculating the average for the other four factors. Looking at the average factors, we see that basically getting hits and scoring runs are about 20-26% more difficult in the MLB than in Japan (at least among the most prominent Japanese transition players), driving runs in is about 46% more difficult in the MLB, and hitting a home run is about 90% more difficult! There is of course one great Japanese position player that never had the opportunity to play in Major League Baseball, and that is the legendary Sadaharu Oh. Oh played in Nippon Professional Baseball from 1959 (when he was age 19) until 1980 (when he was age 40). In his career in Japan, Oh scored 1,967 runs, recorded 2,786 hits, drove in 2,170 runs, had a .301 career batting average, and belted a whopping 868 home runs in 2,831 games played. Oh is Japan's all-time home run king and he has 211 more homers than the guy in 2nd. That booming home run total would also make him MLB's all-time leader and gives him 113 more than Hank Aaron in 467 fewer games, and 106 more than Barry Bonds in 155 fewer games played. Oh would also rank 3rd all-time in RBI, behind only Aaron and Babe Ruth. Of course, to truly compare these great players, we must account for the inferior quality of play in Japan, but also for the more games played per season in the US. How would have Oh fared if he had played his entire career in Major League Baseball? As you could probably guess, we'll use the average factors that we calculated above. We will also adjust up for MLB's longer schedule, but keep in mind that until 1962 there were only 154 games played per season in the MLB. When using the average factors above, we see that Oh would have had scored 1,929 runs, recorded 2,731 hits, drove in 1,839 RBI, and still smashed 565 home runs. He would have played in a total of 3,497 games, which would have placed him 2nd all-time behind only Pete Rose with 3,562 games played. Oh's career batting average would have dropped to about .251, however. While this shows that Oh would have NOT been baseball's home run king, it does show that Oh likely would have been worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame had he been able to play his entire career in the United States. Of course, one could argue that the Japanese baseball that Oh played in was of lesser quality than what the above players saw, and that the adjustment factors used for Oh should have been even stronger. These factors could also be improved to include data on how much easier it has been to play in Japan than in the MLB for players such as Randy Bass, Tuffy Rhodes, Alex Cabrera, and Wladimir Balentien. Nonetheless, I think the factors do a decent enough job of showing us roughly what Oh's hypothetical MLB career would have looked like. During his playing days in Japan, Oh won 11 championships, 9 MVPs (even more than Barry Bonds!), was a 20 time All-Star, a 9 time Gold Glove winner (which were only awarded in the final 9 years of his career), named to the "Best Nine" 18 times, and achieved 2 Triple Crowns. The All-Star game, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, and Best of Nine were not awarded during Oh's playing career. He was inducted in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994. You can check out a detailed read of Oh's case for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown here: baseballguru.com/ctomarkin/analysisctomarkin07.html This other post below also tried to estimate Oh's MLB home run total, and clocked him in for 527 homers: baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright08.html You can check out Oh's Excel workbook below:
Thank you all for reading, and I hope this post shed some light on some of Japan's greatest players. I hope to do a similar post in the future regarding the greatest Negro Leagues players and what their career numbers would have looked like had they been able to play their entire careers in Major League Baseball. I used the following links to obtain the stats in Japan for the players in this post: www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=matsui001hid https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=suzuki001ich https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=aoki--001nor https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=fukudo001kos https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=tsutsu000yos www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=akiyam000sho https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=otani-000sho https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=oh----000sad I would only let Ichiro into Cooperstown because I think that only actual MLB (or Negro League) statistics should be used when making a player's case for the baseball Hall of Fame that is located in... America.
As my first ever blog post pointed out, I like to think of Ty Cobb as my hit king since the 154 game to 162 game transition would have given Cobb more than enough plate appearances to amass more hits than Rose, and Rose only had 67 more career hits than Cobb despite playing in 528 more games. As my second ever blog post pointed out, I like to think of Hank Aaron as my home run king since he only had 7 homers less than Bonds, and did it without the use of performance enhance drugs. Furthermore, if you factor in the schedule change from 154 games to 162 games into Aaron's career, he'd likely have more career homers than Bonds anyway. Pretty cool last name too. Ruth does have a case, however, if he was able to play his entire career as a batter rather than being primarily a pitcher in his earlier seasons.
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