2019 NPB Japanese Baseball set Part 2 of 2 Pacific League

Part 2 of 2 will cover the Pacific League. The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks finished second to the Saitama Seibu Lions, however, they beat them 4-1 in the playoffs to advance to the Japan Series. Both teams were loaded with 6 foils apiece. The Hawks then swept the Giants in the Japan Series. The league MVP was Tomoya Mori of the Lions, who gives you the rare 10 OB catcher. And the best player in the entire set is on the worst team, so you'll have to make it through everyone to see (or skip to the bottom).  

Saitama Seibu Lions 80-62-1 1st place Pacific League

A really strong team, with some standout cards including the aforementioned MVP, Tomoya Mori. I love the Mori card. You give up a bit of defense at catcher, but you have to love the bat. Shuta Tonosaki is one of my favorite cards from an aesthetics and play perspective. Might be a touch expensive for an 8 OB, but I think you get enough out of him to accept the cost. Hotaka Yamakawa walks a lot and he homers a lot. One of those cards that probably frustrates you, but also can carry your team if he gets hot. Sosuke Genda has another standout defensive card. Shogo Akiyama had a really solid season before he headed stateside to play for the Reds. I know Yuji Kaneko will be drafted early, even if he can only Single+. Zach Neal had a 10 point card in the 2020 set, but was great in 2019 and gets the '00 PR Bret Saberhagen special. 

Foils: Tomoya Mori, Sosuke Genda, Shuta Tonosaki, Hotaka Yamakawa, Shogo Akiyama, Zach Neal

1996 Chicago White Sox

Here we go! Only 1 team left after this one. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. This team is very nice. Few FOILS made the cut for this team. Solid closer. Handful of 9obs and a very powerful 11ob Frank Thomas. Then you have a random cheap 10ob. The team also has decent pitching.
If anything is wrong let me know and I can edit at a later date. Follow me on Twitter @bobbumbarger

2019 NPB Japanese Baseball set Part 1 Central League

 The 2021 NPB regular season is set to wrap up soon (they took a couple weeks off for the Olympics) so what better time to look back at the 2019 season? Just like the 2020 season, the Softbank Hawks won the Japan series over the Yomiuri Giants.

Hayato Sakamoto headlined the Giants and took the MVP award in the Central league. Oddly enough, no one was awarded the Sawamura Award for the best pitcher overall (it covers both Central and Pacific League). As no one met the award committee's, "high standards". It's especially odd when you see Yoshinobu Yamamoto's card when I cover the Pacific League. I suspect they overlooked him since he was only 20 years old in 2019 and Japan really likes to acknowledge the veterans. If you recall, Yamamoto had a great card in 2020. And he's been the best pitcher again in 2021 (1.46 ERA in 186 innings at the time of writing this post). I'm really hoping he makes the jump to the MLB at some point. 

I went with a 2001 aesthetic this time around. Although the way I did the points stayed the same so that the sets could be used together, if desired. I ran a few multiple regression analysis models for the points to try and eliminate outliers, so I am hoping I cleaned up that area from the previous set I made. There are a few cards I would adjust from that set (which is on TTS available for anyone to use). I believe the photographs I was able to use are a step up from 2020, as I realized I could search for names using Japanese characters (through Google translate) and I would find a much better sampling to select from. 

Special thanks to all the card creators. Matt, Peter, Bob, Jeff, Matt Gula. And anyone else from the discord that weighed in on design choices. As always, I welcome feedback!

Let's start with the Central League!

Yomiuri Giants 77-64-2 1st place Central League. Lost to the Hawks in the Japan Series. 

Some familiar faces on this team from the 2020 set. The aforementioned MVP winner Sakamoto had a prodigious season and card to match. Shun Yamaguchi is a workhorse and would be someone's early draft pick. Hirokazu Sawamura came over and pitched for the Red Sox in 2021 and gets a solid, if not spectacular, card with the Giants. Tomoyuki Sugano won the Sawamura Award in 2017, 2018, and the Best 9 award in 2020, but in 2019 was only so-so. 

Foils: Hayato Sakamoto, Yoshihiro Maru, Shun Yamaguchi

1996 Minnesota Twins

Another rough team. Don't worry it gets better from here. But there is a few A speed guys and 1 Foil. Chuck Knoblauch is a beast of a card. Also young Radke is nice to see. Its interesting to see some 9OBs here.
If anything is wrong let me know and I can edit at a later date. Follow me on Twitter @bobbumbarger

1994 Super Sim - Playoff Preview

 The playoffs are set to start this weekend in the 1994 season, and do we have some outstanding matchups, a couple series that if they don't make it to a game five will be very disappointing. So going into this weekend, and the next week I will be looking to hammer through these playoffs. I made a personal schedule so I can keep tabs on pitcher tiring, especially the relievers. Every team has a 25 man roster, which for the post season, rotations will go from 5 to 4 man rotations, allowing the 5th starter to slide into a bullpen role. If a bullpen pitcher goes over their IP they will need however many days off for how many IP they go over. Say a 1ip throws 3 innings, he will need 2 days off before he is eligible to pitch again. The only way he could pitch is if every pitcher on the roster has already been used, in that case he will now be a -1IP while entering the game. Lets get into these outstanding matchups, I will be creating a thread in the discord for the playoffs so anyone that wants to follow along will be able to see where to access it.

The "30 for 30" League -- Introduction and FIRST ROUND

Thanks to the creation of the BOT and Savard's amazing simulator, a long-standing dream of mine is finally on the cusp of fruition: a 30 team draft league, where the pool of players a team can draft comes from their franchise rosters of the past 30 years (1992 to 2021). Amazingly, thirty different managers all signed up and participated in a 25 round draft!

Now lets get to the draft:

With the FIRST PICK, the Kansas City Royals selected Zack Grienke: 

1994 Super Sim- What If The Strike Never Happened?!

 I was five years old in 1994 when the strike shut down the Major League Season, many things were going on that season that were unanswered. Oddly enough I didn't know much about this season due to me being so young, but this past 2 years has been the renaissance for the great game of MLB showdown, this blog was the first step for me, finding it and connecting with the wonderful people that run the blog. Then myself making interactive leagues where the community drafted and I played the games out led to me making a discord for everyone to have one collective space to talk trash to each other. Sadly the pandemic happened but a tiny glimmer was the explosion of the discord and MLB showdown and all the cool things that came with it. Two of the biggest things was a discord member SavardTheGoat created a super sim code where he can sim a full 162 game season before you can even think of the rosters. Secondly, was an absolute gamechanger and that was the creation of the Showdown Bot by the wonderful Matt Gula. What happens when you combine these two super powers together?  The correct answer is many things, but the first one for you all to find out about is taking the stats and games played from prior to the strike and having the sim engine simulate the remaining games of the season to get to the playoffs. 

1996 Detroit Tigers

 Woof! This is a rough team. They were the worst team in the AL. There is basically only 1 shining light on this team and that is Bobby Higginson. Pride is ok. And it is cool to see Tony Clark the rookie. But the rest of this team is a hard pass.
If anything is wrong let me know and I can edit at a later date. Follow me on Twitter @bobbumbarger