Ten years have come and gone, and nary a pennant for these Hanshin Tigers. This is obviously not ideal, but I have some great news for you, Tigers fans! Not only a CL pennant, but a Nippon Ichi is in the cards sometime in the upcoming decade! Look at this pattern since the two-league format began:
1950s: NOTHING → 1960s: Two CL Pennants (1962 / 1964), no Nippon Ichi
1970s: NOTHING → 1980s: Nippon Ichi (1985)!
1990s: NOTHING → 2000s: Two CL Pennants (2003 / 2005), no Nippon Ichi
2010s: NOTHING → 2020s: See the pattern? We are destined to win it ALL!
Anyhow, let’s look back on the 10 teams that were fielded this past decade. What were their records, their final place in the standings, and things that characterized them. This ranking is not strictly by wins-losses, but rather how they felt from the fans’ perspective. Keep in mind, the writer did not follow the team for the first four years of the decade!
Here we go!
10. 2012 (55-75-14): 5th place
Manager: Yutaka Wada (1st year)
Standout stat: 58 home runs as a team. (Wladimir Balentien would hit 60 the very next year in just 130 games.)
Season story: The team never really got things going, but as the year dragged on, it just got worse and worse. They lost ground on the league-leading Giants in bunches: 9.5 games in July, 8 in August, 6 in September. Ultimately, they finished 31.5 games back, and wasted what was a pretty good year from the pitching staff: Yasutomo Kubo (2.33 ERA), Atsushi Nohmi (2.42), Randy Messenger (2.52) and Jason Standridge (2.69) had the rotation doing its part, and Kosuke Katoh (0.83), Kyuji Fujikawa (1.32), Shinobu Fukuhara (1.76), Naoto Tsuru (1.89), Ryo Watanabe (2.06) and Daiki Enokida (2.34) anchored a solid bullpen. Those bats, though… the top home run hitter was Craig Brazell with just 12. A lean year and a rough start for skipper Wada. You think this team stank, though? The BayStars finished 9.5 games back of us!!!
9. 2018 (62-79-2): 6th place
Manager: Tomoaki Kanemoto (3rd year)
Standout stat: 21-39-2 (.350) at Koshien Stadium.
8. 2016 (64-76-3): 4th place
Manager: Kanemoto (1st year)
Standout stat: 126 different starting orders, including 117 that lasted just one game.
7. 2011 (68-70-6): 4th place
Manager: Akinobu Mayumi (3rd year)
Standout stat: Kanemoto’s 1766-game ironman streak stopped (by Shunsuke’s failed stolen base attempt)
6. 2015 (70-71-2): 3rd place
Manager: Wada (4th year)
Standout stat: 5-11-1 was the team’s record down the stretch. They were in 1st until September 10, but this miserable finish resulted in a tailspin into 3rd and a dismissal for the manager.
5. 2013 (73-67-4): 2nd place
Manager: Wada (2nd year)
Standout stat: 7 guys named to the all-star team (Atsushi Nohmi, Shintaro Fujinami, Akihito Fujii, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Takashi Toritani, Takahiro Arai, Matt Murton. 3 of these (Nishioka, Toritani, Murton) given Best Nine Awards at season’s end. Still, bowed out in the first round of the playoffs, losing two straight to the Hiroshima Carp.
4. 2019 (69-68-6): 3rd place
Manager: Akihiro Yano (1st year)
Standout stat: 102 errors, including 53 combined from 3B & SS. Snuck into the playoffs thanks to a season-ending six-game winning streak, and upset the Yokohama DeNA BayStars in the first round. That was when the magic spell wore off, though.
3. 2017 (78-61-4): 2nd place
Manager: Kanemoto (2nd year)
Standout stat: Five relievers each threw 60+ games, all with sub-2.75 ERAs. That quintet was Suguru Iwazaki, Kentaro Kuwahara, Akifumi Takahashi, Marcos Mateo and Rafael Dolis. Combined for a 25-11 record with a 2.23 ERA and 375 K in 307 innings.
Season story: The best place to start with this bunch is on May 6, when they completed the most historic comeback in club history. Down 0-9 to the Hiroshima Carp, they came all the way back to win 12-9, and took over first place. They kept top spot for three weeks, then stayed in the fight until the start of September. Other highlights in this season include Takashi Toritani‘s courageous return just a day after having his nose broken by a pitch on May 25. He also collected his 2000th career hit as well as his 1000th career walk. Two pitchers hit home runs: Messenger at Jingu, and Akiyama at Nagoya Dome. Shintaro Fujinami helped start a brawl at Kyocera Dome early in April. A certain Panda (Jason Rogers) stirred things up midseason. But the game that no one will forget came in the playoffs, when bad NPB scheduling combined with bad weather to give us a true mud bowl. Game 2 of the first stage of the Climax Series was played on the slickest Koshien field ever. (The Tigers lost that game and the next, bringing their strong season to a premature end.)
2. 2010 (78-63-3): 2nd place
Manager: Mayumi (2nd year)
Standout stats: 174 team home runs (including 47 by Craig Brazell); .290 team BA (5 guys – Keiichi Hirano .350, Matt Murton .349, Takahiro Arai .311, Kenji Johjima .303, Takashi Toritani .301 above .300)
Season story: This was the year saw Tomoaki Kanemoto‘s super ironman streak of 1492 straight complete games come to an end. Also, Matt Murton joined the team, replacing retired star Norihiro Akahoshi in center field. All he did was set the NPB record for most single-season hits with 214. As evidenced by the above stat, this team mashed. They even had the top spot in the league, and had their magic number lamp lit part-way through September. Unfortunately, they were without steady starter Minoru Iwata all season, and Atsushi Nohmi was hurt a bunch as well. Put another way, when your third greatest inning-eater (with just 100 innings) is a worn-out 42-year old (Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi), you’re not in great shape on the mound. In the end, this team finished just one game out of first, but failed to win a single game in the playoffs, bowing out with barely a whimper.
1. 2014 (75-68-1): 2nd place
Manager: Wada (3rd year)
Standout stats: CL top numbers for Murton (.338 AVG), Mauro Gomez (109 RBI), Messenger (13 W, 226 K), Seung-hwan Oh (39 SV).
Season story: Tsuyoshi Nishioka collided with Kosuke Fukudome in shallow right field during the second game of the year, and missed most of the season. On the other hand, Gomez and Murton came out of the gates blazing hot, leading the team to a 19-10 start. After struggles in the interleague portion of the season, they picked things back up in July. Unfortunately, August and September were not kind to the team, and they needed a final-game loss by the Hiroshima Carp to lock up second place, thereby earning the right to host round 1 of the playoffs. That best-of-3 produced a grand total of one run between the two teams in two games. That solo home run by Fukudome was enough to propel the team into the next round, which took place at Tokyo Dome against the pennant-winning Yomiuri Giants. Despite being overwhelming underdogs, the Tigers swept them with seeming ease: 4-1, 5-2, 4-2, 8-4. Then, after winning Game 1 of the Nippon Series, they lost the final four games consecutively, thereby bringing their exciting season to an end. For the record, both Murton and Messenger have gone on record as saying this 2014 season (and especially the playoff sweep of the Giants) was a career highlight for them. A fuller look at the season can be read here.
There you go. On the decade, the team had one last-place finish, one 5th, two 4th, two 3rd, and four 2nd. The overall team record during the decade was 692-698-45 for a win percentage of .498 – pretty mediocre. Honestly, we need to do better in the 2020s, and though I said we will win the Nippon Ichi once in the next decade, I’d obviously prefer it if we could pull a SoftBank Hawks, who won SIX this decade – one against each CL team!