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The story
A thread on 5ch heated up over a hypothetical: if you picked NPB’s all-time “Best Nine” based purely on defense, who makes the cut? It started with the observation that the Golden Glove Award tends to be swayed by batting stats, and while familiar names like Atsuya Furuta, Ryosuke Kikuchi, and Yoshio Yoshida were treated as locks, opinions split over whether active shortstop Sosuke Genda’s glove would actually hold up in MLB. Third base and center field also drew multiple candidates, and the thread never quite settled on a final lineup.
What people said
For pitcher, is it Kuwata or Matsuzaka?
The Golden Glove's basically decided by batting stats anyway.
No idea about left — maybe Maeda or someone.
My late grandpa, a diehard Giants fan, used to go on about this all the time too:
"Shortstop is Yoshida! Not Hirooka — Yoshio Yoshida!"
even though I've never actually seen him play.
Tsuji's Golden Gloves were earned with his bat, not his glove.
If you're picking from Hankyu/Orix, it's gotta be Motonishi.
MLB shortstops are on a whole different level when it comes to arm strength.
which is why a cannon arm is non-negotiable there.
2B: Hatsuhiko Tsuji
3B: Hironori Ishige
SS: Kazuo Matsui
CF: Koji Akiyama
RF: Haniuda
LF: Ken Hirano
DH: Koichi Tabuchi
every former pro who's weighed in says he's the best defender ever at the position.
Can't really count Miyamoto as a third baseman
Is Bansuro fine?
honestly most of them are bad lol
Ito
Oh
Tsuji
Nagashima
Kawai
Minoda
Fukumoto
Ichiro
I hate the Giants but I'll give him that.
Read the thread title.
even leaving batting out of it, it's Okamoto.
to the Lions, where Koji Akiyama held center field.
He said that even on balls he gave up thinking "that's extra bases…",
Akiyama would run it down with ease and bail him out.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The Golden Glove Award is chosen by votes from managers, coaches, and reporters, but in practice it tends to favor players with strong batting numbers — NPB has no official metric that directly measures range or throwing accuracy. So every name floated in the thread rests on individual memory or highlight-reel impressions rather than any statistical backing. As for the contested question of Sosuke Genda’s defense, MLB shortstops play deeper and need a stronger arm to cope with higher batted-ball speeds — a structural difference that’s easy to overlook if you take “his defense is great, so it would translate” at face value.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Halpro) thread “If NPB picked a Best Nine based on defense alone.”
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