Japanese MLB players successful ranking in my personal point of view

(5, June, 2022)

・What is this for?

You can briefly take an overall look at Japanese MLB players; when their professional career starts? When their MLB career starts? and when is their retirement. Each player is ranked based on how successful they are. It is based on my personal point of view with my comment.

・Ranking Criteria

Each player is ranked from S/A/B/C/D, according to comparison of his performance between NPB and MLB.
*NPB means the Japanese Professional Baseball League.

If his performance/statistics drop in MLB, the rank gets lower. For example, Yu Darvish is a great good pitcher in MLB but his performance & statistics get less qualified compared with NPB (e.g. his NPB career ERA is 1.99 while it’s 3.50 in Big League). Therefore, his rank will get lower accordingly in spite of his enough good performance in MLB. Hideki Matsui and Masahiro Tanaka are considered similar; they would have broken more records or made better stats if they continued playing in NPB, but in MLB, their stats were just good, not  excellent one.

If the performance/statistics are at the same level between NPB and MLB, he is considered successful in my chart. Hiroki Kuroda‘s performance was almost at the same level in both leagues, so he is ranked high. For more examples, MLB stats of So Taguchi and Shigetoshi Hasegawa are not outstanding, but they performed in Big League at the same quality when they played in NPB. And they are ranked high for that.

Junichi Tazawa is very exceptional, playing direcctly in MLB from his very first career, without NPB career.

This is totally based on my personal point of view and idea, so it may be controversial. Please feel free to post your comment of agree/disagree.

・Major differences between NPB and MLB

In many aspects, circumstances are quite different between NPB and MLB as follows.

Many Japanese players struggle to adjust differences above, but please keep in mind that all players transferred to MLB performed brilliant and outstanding in Japan NPB.

・Data table of Japanese MLB players successful ranking

You can take a look at my spreadsheet of Japanese MLB players successful ranking here.

*You can browse and scrol above table freely.

View larger table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vScmr89KOxdjpnt16w1OgetQZK7xKyHKc-b8uitQ1X6hByA5FG4_-zlB5mkm1cI6QcQuMDZo1z5wVIV/pubhtml

Data Reference: Wikipedia (Japanese Edition)

・Summary~More pitchers found successful than batters

Finally, here is the summary of the ranking.

As a result, more numbers of pitchers are found successful but the ratio looks similar with hitters. Some players are still active in MLB, so I am looking forward to their future performance that will make changes on the ranking. I will keep updated on this.

Fin.

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