From our other sites
The story
On the Nanjyo (なんJ) baseball board, Hanshin Tigers slugger Sato Teruaki’s second consecutive 100-RBI season sparked a thread investigating which player was the last to notch back-to-back 100-RBI seasons for each of Japan’s 12 pro teams. Posters threw out names like Kurihara Kenta (Hiroshima), Luis Lopez, Nakata Sho, and Fujimura Fumio for various teams, though mixed-up names and years led to repeated corrections. The thread eventually drifted into a story about Hara Tatsunori, who was blasted as “unfit to be Yomiuri’s cleanup hitter” in a season where he hit .300 with 30 home runs and 100 RBIs — sparking debate over whether Giants fans of that era were being too harsh in comparing him to legends Nagashima and Oh, and whether that harsh judgment was actually fair.
What people said
Tokyo (Yakult) — Murakami Munetaka — 2021-2022
Seibu — Yamakawa Hotaka — 2018-2019
Didn't Kurihara miss 100 RBIs last year, though?
I thought by now he was just "the other Kurihara." (there's more than one Kurihara in NPB)
That's wrong.
That year was 92 RBIs–103 RBIs.
Sorry, my mistake.
Hiroshima — Lopez — 1996-1997
This one's the right answer….
A Lopez on Hiroshima? Never heard of him.
When I hear "Lopez," the only one I know is Jose Lopez from Yokohama.
That one's wrong too.
Arai had back-to-back 100-RBI seasons with Hiroshima in 2006-2007.
2007
.310, 25 HR, 92 RBI
2008
.332, 23 HR, 103 RBI
He was a good hitter. Wasn't he from Yamagata?
Okamoto Kazuma
Age 21 — 100 RBI
Age 22 — 94 RBI
Age 23 — 97 RBI
Age 24 — 113 RBI
Age 25 — 82 RBI
Age 26 — 93 RBI
Age 27 — 83 RBI
Age 28 — 49 RBI (missed extended time with a ligament injury)
Driving in that many runs starting at 21 is ridiculous.
Total monster.
Apparently Boomer did it four years in a row.
Well, there's no way Rhodes didn't get there in '01.
Oh Sadaharu — 2,170 RBI
If you drove in 100 runs every single year for 22 seasons starting as a rookie out of high school, you'd break the record.
Just keep it up until you're 40.
This guy's stats are always broken.
That'd be Luis Lopez.
He was with the team two years and topped 100 RBIs both times.
I already knew about that whole incident with Maeda, but I only recently found out he also had a pretty ugly clash with Nomura, who'd stepped in to break it up.
He was hitting leadoff sometimes, and the Fighters back then were just… yeah.
Nippon Ham — Nakata Sho — 2014-2016
Grandpa (nickname) — Matsunaka Nobuhiko — 2003-2005
Yomiuri — Ramirez — 2008-2010
Tokyo (Yakult) — Ramirez — 2005-2007
Kintetsu — Rhodes — 2001-2003
Seibu — Cabrera — 2001-2003
Hankyu — Boomer — 1985-1987
Hiroshima — Yamamoto Koji — 1979-1981
Hanshin — Fujimura Fumio — 1949-1951
Guess Ramirez's "refuse the walk, chase RBIs no matter what, dump the pressure on yourself" hitting style really was the right call after all.
Nakata looks out of place on this list, but he's actually legit.
Chunichi had the Araiba combo (nickname for the Araki-Ibata double-play duo) during a hitter-friendly era — did neither Fukudome nor Woods manage it?
Why? Did he choke in a pennant-deciding playoff like Matsunaka did or something?
It's because fans had lived through an era where the cleanup hitter before him was Oh, and before that, Nagashima.
This was an era where being anyone other than Oh or Nagashima batting cleanup for the Giants was basically a crime.
Makes no sense. Oh was a monster right to the end, sure, but Nagashima's last three years were pretty mediocre — there's no way you get dogpiled after hitting .300/30 homers/100 RBIs.
In any field, plenty of people get bashed simply for succeeding someone great.
Woods hit the mark if you combine his Yokohama years, but not with Chunichi alone.
2004 — 103 RBI — Yokohama
2005 — 103 RBI — Chunichi
2006 — 144 RBI — Chunichi
2007 — 102 RBI — Chunichi
I'm just saying Sato Teruaki hitting 100 RBIs yesterday is impressive, that's all. Got a problem with that?
Sato's the reason this thread got started, but that's not what I'm saying 💢
If you look above, you'll see several teams don't even have anyone with three straight years — that's why it had to be two.
It's just about perception, right? "Nagashima and Oh were on another level, Hara feels like he's missing something." The guys bashing him probably grew up idolizing Nagashima and Oh as kids.
Even so, getting bashed in a .300/30-homer/100-RBI season has to be an exaggeration.
He got saddled with the label of a cleanup hitter who folds in the clutch. Whether that was actually true is debatable.
Well, I never personally witnessed the bashing against Hara in real time, so I can't say for sure, but I definitely felt that older generation's mindset of "Nagashima and Oh are gods, everyone else is a letdown."
Background and Key Points
The RBI totals and years posted in this thread are just posters’ recollections offered up from memory — not checked against official records, as shown by how the numbers for Kurihara Kenta and Lopez had to be corrected multiple times. Readers should treat this as “unverified info crowdsourced by volunteers,” not confirmed data. The heated debate late in the thread over Hara Tatsunori being blasted as “unfit for cleanup” stems from the unique position he was in: taking over the Giants’ cleanup spot right after two of the biggest stars in NPB history, Nagashima Shigeo and Oh Sadaharu. Opinions in the thread split between those who actually witnessed that criticism firsthand back then and those who, looking only at the stat line, doubted that getting bashed after a .300/30-homer/100-RBI season could be anything but an exaggeration — highlighting a generational gap with those who never experienced the mood of that era directly.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary from the 5ch (Nanjyo) thread “The Last Player on Each of the 12 Teams With Back-to-Back 100-RBI Seasons lol.”
Leave a Reply