There are currently 12 Japanese players in Major League Baseball (MLB) and their rarity results in significant attention. However, 23 of the 59 Japanese MLB players in the past only played for one or two years or were on the disabled list for most of their tenure and only actively played in one or two seasons.
So, the question remains: Is all the attention they get deserved or are they overhyped?
The first Japanese player to play in MLB was Masanori Murakami, a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants from 1964 to 1965. He pitched in 54 games with good enough performance that the Giants initially refused the order from his Japanese team for him to return after his first season there. After some negotiations, the Japanese baseball commissioner allowed the Giants to keep him for one more season.
Another Japanese player wouldn’t join the MLB for another 30 years.
Hideo Nomo, nicknamed “The Tornado” due to his unique twisting pitching style, was one of Japan’s top pitchers, so his team wasn’t happy to see him go. However, the ¥200 million signing bonus was too much to resist. Nomo was a popular player in MLB, pitching there from 1995-2005. His MLB salary peaked in 2004 at ¥973 million, and his performance was often good, winning over 10 games in seven out of his 11 seasons.
Historically, salaries in MLB have always been significantly higher than in Japan. In 2023, the average salary in Japan was ¥44.68 million. The MLB’s average salary was 10 times higher. This huge discrepancy in salary is a factor that has led the MLB to poach some of Japan’s best players.
Ten of the MLB’s current 12 players are actually pitchers (excluding two-way player Ohtani).
Japan’s smaller strike zone may have something to do with this since pitchers in Japan need to be highly accurate, and they thus develop very high skills. Also, Japanese players being shorter and having less muscle in general leads to less of a pool to choose from regarding big sluggers.
Of the 59 players who came to MLB in the past, 43 were pitchers.
Major league baseball usually attracts Japan’s best, but one player who came over left many people scratching their heads. Besides his defensive skills, fashion sense and dazzling smile, Tsuyoshi Shinjo (2001-2003) was not an exceptional player in Japan or America. Mac Suzuki (1996-2002), Kei Igawa (2007-2008) and Masao Kida (1999-2005) didn’t fare much better in MLB.
Then there’s Hideki Irabu (1997-2002). During his six MLB seasons, he only had two in which he won more than 10 games. However, both of these seasons were with the World Series champion New York Yankees. Irabu was not a popular player and was known for his weight problem, smoking cigarettes between innings and drunken brawls. Sadly, Irabu committed suicide at the age of 42.
The biggest disappointment of all was Daisuke Matsuzaka. The Red Sox acquired him for a then astounding $51 million bid and he played in MLB from 2007-2014. While he lived up to the hype with decent results in 2007 and an amazing 2008 season, injuries led him to miss most games from 2009 to 2014. As for the games he did pitch during his last six years, his results were quite poor. Thus, he is probably the highest profile Japanese player with the most disappointing performance.
“Ohtani has 38 wins, so he is 9% of the way there, but would you be considered as having the potential to be the best of all time at anything if you still had 91% to go?”
Sometimes it's unfair to judge Japanese players by traditional standards. Hideki Matsui’s stats in Japan were amazing, but they were just decent in MLB. “Godzilla” was a power hitter, once hitting 50 home runs in Japan in a season. However, in 10 seasons in MLB, he only hit over 30 homers once. He did get over 100 RBIs in four seasons, had a decent .282 MLB average and was a clutch player, though.
Yu Darvish is also similarly difficult to place. His first three seasons in MLB were very good, but he’s been somewhat inconsistent since then. However, he put up very impressive numbers in 2020 and 2022. Granted, he did spend his best years in Japan and nearly all pitchers struggle later in their careers due to injury or aging.
You can say the same for Kenta Maeda, Hisashi Iwakuma, Masahiro Tanaka, Hiroki Kuroda and Koji Uehara. All excellent pitchers in MLB, albeit with some performance limitations due to injury or age-related issues.
No player has created as much excitement as Shohei Ohtani has since the 1998 race to break Roger Maris’ home run record by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Many people even say he has the potential to become the greatest of all time. But is it too soon to tell?
Regarding home runs, let’s compare Ohtani’s numbers with Hank Aaron’s. Aaron averaged 37 homers per season. While Ohtani has a similar average of 39, Aaron did that for over two decades. Ohtani must keep it up for another 15 years to catch up.
Ohtani deserves a lot of attention because he can not only hit but also pitches superbly. Cy Young is the pitching wins record holder with 417. Ohtani has 38 wins, so he is 9% of the way there, but would you be considered as having the potential to be the best of all time at anything if you still had 91% to go?
So, although Ohtani’s performance has been amazing so far, and his ability to both hit and pitch is ultra rare, it’s still quite early in his career.
Let’s talk about a bona fide GOAT. One of the greatest contact hitters of all time, Ichiro Suzuki got 3,089 hits in 18 years in the majors.
If you add his hits from his nine seasons in Japan, Ichiro would be the all-time hit leader of the world. Interestingly, his unorthodox swing (nicknamed “pendulum”) was unacceptable to his manager in Japan, who kept him in the minors for his first two years due to it. Perhaps the rigidity of Japanese baseball is another reason why some of Japan’s best players hop the pond.
Japanese players in MLB surely bring their best, whether they’re successful or not. The fact that most are pitchers who spent their primes in Japan is an important factor to consider when judging their performance. The plain fact is nearly all pitchers experience injury and lose velocity later in their careers. Regardless, Japanese players are not just athletes — they are also like bridges between two cultures.
Their journey is more than miles: it’s a testament to the universal language of baseball.
Dr. James Rogers is a university professor who has published books and over 50 articles on linguistics and Japanese studies. He is the author of the book "On Living and Working in Japan.
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