Seiya Suzuki’s Profile and Japan Stats｜Japanese slugger in MLB｜For Cubs fans

(9, April, 2022)

This article deals with;
・Seiya Suzuki’s stats in NPB(Japan Professional Baseball League) with highlight movie.
・His batting titles and player characteristics.

Contents

１．Prologue
２．Profile data of Seiya Suzuki
３．6 years stats and highlight video
4．Epilogue

１．Prologue

Seiya Suzuki, Japanese leading slugger, finally joins MLB, Chicago Cubs, after the historical lock-out negotiation, which delayed the schedule of openint game.
This article looks into his Profile, Stats, Achievements when he played in NPB (Japan Professional Baseball League), and my personal prediction of his performance in Big League.

Reference of this article:
・Wikipedia ”鈴木誠也”
URL: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%88%B4%E6%9C%A8%E8%AA%A0%E4%B9%9F

２．Profile data of Seiya Suzuki

Here is Seiya Suzuki’s personal data as of now (April, 2022).

Name	Seiya Suzuki
Nationality	Japan
Born in	Arakawa-ku, Tokyo
Birth	18, August, 1994
Age	27 years old as of now(April, 2022)
Height	5′ 11″ (180.3 cm)
Weight	182 lb (82.6 kg)
B/T	Right/Right
Position	Outfielder

３．6 years stats and highlight video

Let’s look at Seiya Suzuki’s career. He joined NPB, Hiroshima Toyo Carp after graduating from High School.He played for Hiroshima Toyo Carp for 9 seasons from the year 2013 to 2021, before joining Chicago Cubs. Let’s look at his recent 6 seasons stats and highlight video.

→View larger image

What’s astonishing is the stability in his performance; high average in 6 consecutive seasons(2016~2022) with more than .300 average and OPS around 1.000 or more. During this period, he played in most of the games in each season, more than 110 games every year. I think he has enough toughness to endure MLB’s long distance transportation and many numbers of games without injury.

Now, here is the highlighted video of his performance in Japan. Look at his brilliance in both hitting and defense.

Video from Youtube Channel: DRAMATIC BASEBALL 2022
Title: 【NPB最強打者】鈴木誠也/Seiya Suzuki【新天地へ】
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skFJoSMjLjI

・Major hitting Titles

Here’s Seiya Suzuki’s major hitting titles in Japan;

・OPS Leader: 3 times
In 2017(.936), 2019(1.018) and 2021(1.072) seasons.

・Hitting Average Leader: 2 times
In 2019(.335) and 2021(.317) seasons.

・Intentional Walk Leader: 2 times
In 2019(12) and 2021(21) seasons.

・In Tokyo 2020, he was in 4th hitting order of Japan’s National Team

In Olympic games of Tokyo 2020, Seiya Suzuki was in Japan national team of 4th hitter, which is the order for the most valuable slugger in Japanese baseball philosophy.
*In MLB, the most strongest slugger would be put on 2nd or 3rd hitting order based on Sabermetrics, but Japan’s baseball idea is slightly different.
So, it proves that he is the most important slugger in NPB. I hope he proves his ability in Big League as well.

・Defence ability; good outfielder

Seiya Suzuki has been awarded Golden Grlove 5 times in his NPB career as an Outfielder (2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021 seasons). *It is same like MLB’s Gold Glove Award.
He has a strong arm to throw like razor beam. You can watch a little bit of his defence in the highlighted video above (3:50 time appx). He’s not only a slugger, but also a good outfielder.

・Musclulous/Physical feature

Some of Japanese baseball players undervalue the effectiveness of weight training, muscle or physical features; such Japanese analysts/players put an emphasis too much on training of running in long distance to gain stamina and lower muscles. However, in my opinion, the reason why many brilliant NPB fielders fail to play good in Big League, is in this point; they can’t play well in MLB due to inferiority in muscle/physical power, beaten by powerful Big Leaguers.
Currently, most MLB players are physically bigger and far more powerful than Japanese, and they are beaten by that.

Japanese big leaguers who train their physical ability with weight training etc., tend to do well such as Sawamura(Boston Red Sox), Yu Darvish(San Diego Padres) and of course, Shohei Ohtani(Losangeles Angels). They are muscle freaks (in positive meaning) and perform well in MLB.
I expect Seiya Suzuki to perform same like Japan league to prove that NPB level is as high as MLB.

・My guess of expectations

This is my personal guess only, but Seiya Suzuki will perform relatively well if without accidental injury, with hitting average around .280 and 20 home-runs. ”Adjust” will take time for him but I believe he can do it while playing well in games simultaneously. I want to review my prediction after 2022 season.

4．Epilogue

At the very first Opening game of his debut match over the Brewers on 7/April/2022, Seiya Suzuki hit one single, which was a good start. Don’t miss to watch the following video.