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The story
Uehara Koji naming Saito Masaki, Saito Kazumi, and Tanaka Masahiro as his “Top 3 Aces Since the Heisei Era” became a hot topic on 5ch.
In the thread, commenters pushed back one after another in favor of Nomo Hideo, Darvish Yu, and Yamamoto Yoshinobu, opinions split over whether an “ace” should be judged by win totals or by quality of pitching, and the conversation eventually derailed into a debate over NPB’s popularity in the 1980s.
What people said
Wins and losses matter most, though
Even pitchers who supposedly get "zero run support" rarely actually get zero — usually they get handed a 1- or 2-run lead and immediately cough it right back up. Kanamaru's the textbook case.
Baseball's popularity was at its lowest point while that guy was actually playing, though
No need to force yourself to sound like an expert
The '80s were when baseball was at its most popular. What are you even talking about?
After Oh and Nagashima retired, the stars were gone and things got gloomy. That was the Giants' "dark age," right? Popularity only picked back up once Matsui showed up.
People were sick of the Giants dominating everything during their V9 run — once the tables turned and Hiroshima rose up, players outside the Giants started getting nationwide popularity too. The late '70s through the '80s were the golden age of NPB popularity.
What world are you living in where the Giants had no popularity between the O-N retirement and Matsui joining? That gap WAS the peak.
Guys like that show up every year. Same level as Tigers pitchers like Murakami or Takahashi. If you don't win 20 games, you're not an ace.
Both of them ended up pitching in the World Series though. Judging them just by the "got hit hard" impression is tunnel vision.
Is there actually anyone who'd bring up Ohtani here?
Nobody would bring him up
How much has he even pitched? He's supposedly a pitcher first, but he hasn't held down a rotation spot for the Dodgers three years running.
It's about substance, not stats. Saito Kazumi WAS the word "dominant" in pitcher form. I also think he's the number one since Heisei.
Darvish doesn't even have a league-leading win total. Even Aoyagi has won it twice.
Nah, that's only true for part of it. What were Pacific League attendance numbers like?
Lol, so you're admitting the Central League was at its peak
During the Giants' V9 era, the Pacific League was basically treated as a punching bag reserved for the All-Star Game and Japan Series — about as unpopular as it gets.
Kudo I get — he was a genuine ace for Daiei. But with Yamamoto Masa, you just can't shake the "second option" feel. Part of that's on the Chunichi Dragons too, honestly, since you can name better pitchers than him for pretty much any stretch of time.
🤣🤣🤣
Darvish isn't quite on that level
Very fitting for Uehara, who's clearly still super jealous of Matsuzaka
Back in Yoshinobu's day there weren't any decent hitters in the Pacific League though
I'm talking about after he went to MLB
Ah, so that explains why prime Kaneko Chihiro felt more like Orix's true ace
Both Sugano and Uehara — don't you feel like a Giants ace needs one or two more years at that level? They're just a bit short of being the clear face of an era.
If neither Sugano nor Uehara can be candidates, then there's nobody else left
Same goes for Togo and Yamazaki Iori. Though Togo looks like he might be bouncing back this year.
Background and Key Points
Uehara Koji is himself one of the pitchers this question is really about: a former Yomiuri Giants and Rakuten ace who won the 2002 Sawamura Award (NPB’s Cy Young equivalent) before reinventing himself as a closer in MLB, most famously nailing down the 2013 World Series for the Red Sox. The “Heisei era” he’s ranking spans 1989–2019, the stretch in which NPB shifted from a self-contained league into a pitcher pipeline for MLB. His three picks: Saito Masaki, the Waseda “Handkerchief Prince” of the 2006 Koshien final who became Nippon-Ham’s ace; Saito Kazumi, a Giants right-hander remembered for an extremely short but statistically overpowering peak; and Tanaka Masahiro, who went 24-0 for Rakuten in 2013 before joining the Yankees. The names posters wanted instead — Nomo Hideo, who broke the posting-system path to MLB in 1995, Darvish Yu, and current Dodgers ace Yamamoto Yoshinobu — represent a more MLB-facing, “faced the world’s best” idea of what an ace is.
The thread’s real fault line is definitional: does “ace” require a heavy win total (the camp that disqualifies Darvish, who never led NPB in wins, and doubts Saito Kazumi’s two-season peak), or does it mean pure dominance regardless of longevity or run support? That same split is why commenters kept nominating Uehara himself even though his list excludes him.
What’s easy to miss without NPB background: the 1980s tangent is a Central League vs. Pacific League argument in disguise — the Pacific League drew poorly and was treated as a sideshow outside the All-Star break and Japan Series, while the Giants kept national ratings high even after Oh and Nagashima retired. The thread also never mentions that Uehara’s list conspicuously snubs Matsuzaka Daisuke, his long-time rival, which several posters clearly read as a pointed omission rather than an oversight.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Uehara Koji: “The 3 Big Aces Since Heisei Are "Saito-Masa" Kazumi "Tanaka Ma"” ← Wait, what?“.
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