Kimiyasu Kudo

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Kimiyasu Kudo
Kudo Kimiyasu.jpg
Saitama Seibu Lions - No. 55
Pitcher
Born: May 5, 1963
Toyoake , JapanJapanJapan 
Strikes: Left Throws: Left
Debut in the Nippon Pro Yakyū
April 10,  1982  with the Seibu Lions
NPB statistics
(until 2010)
Win- Loss    224-142
Earned Run Average    3.45
Strikeouts    2,859
Complete games    116
Shutouts    24
Teams

Kimiyasu Kudō ( Japanese 工藤 公 康 , Kudō Kimiyasu , often romanized as Kudoh; born May 5, 1963 in Toyoake , Aichi Prefecture ) is a Japanese baseball player for the Saitama Seibu Lions in the Pacific League . In 2010, the left-handed pitcher is the only still active pitcher with more than 200 wins, alongside Masa Yamamoto . He was inducted into the Best Nine three times and took part in the All-Star Game eight times , and in 1987 he received the Shōriki Matsutarō Prize .

Kudō attended Nagoya-Denki High School, with which he threw the 19th no-hitter in tournament history in his senior year at the summer Kōshien 1981 ; his team was later eliminated in the semifinals. In the 1981 draft he came in the sixth round to the Seibu Lions, for whom he made his debut in the first team on April 10, 1982 and had over 20 appearances as a reliever in his rookie year. In the same year he also had his first brief appearance in the Nihon Series , in which he won the first of eight championship titles with Seibu. From the 1985 season Kudō was regularly used as a starter, in the same year he scored the best ERA in the league for the first time with 2.76 .

In the 1985 Nihon Series against the Hanshin Tigers , Kudo had to allow a 3-run home run by Hanshin's homerunch champion Randy Bass in the first and third game . The Lions won the third game, but the series and championship later went to the Tigers. A year later, in the 1986 championship series , Kudo turned the series around with a walk-off hit after a draw and three losses for the Lions, who also won the following three games. Kudō was named MVP of the Nihon Series, a title he received again in 1987 when he contributed to Seibu's victory over the Yomiuri Giants with two wins and a save . In 1987, when he recorded the league's best ERA for the second time in the regular season, he was first inducted into the Pacific League's Best Nine.

Also due to injuries, he threw weaker seasons towards the end of the 1980s: In 1989 he recorded an ERA of over four for the first time with 4.96 and his first losing record as a starter with 4–8 , in the same year the Lions missed the Nihon Series for the first time since 1984. From a strong season in 1991 Kudo was stable again to the better pitchers in the league. In 1993 Seibu lost the championship after three consecutive titles, but Kudō was awarded for a good season performance (15-3, 2.06) as the MVP of the Pacific League and for the second time as a Best Nine member.

In 1994, Kudo did not renew his contract with the Lions and became a free agent. For 1995 he signed a contract with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks under the new manager Sadaharu Oh . For the Hawks, the Oh era marked the turn from a weakest team in the league to a championship contender. Kudo played for five years in Fukuoka, his best season he threw in 1999 (11-7, 2.38), when the Hawks also recorded the first Nihon Series win in 35 years. Then Kudo moved to the record champions Yomiuri Giants in the Central League . After another strong year in 2000, in which he was included in the Best Nine and awarded a Golden Glove , he was barely used in 2001, impaired by an injury, and then threw him as a solid starter with winning records for the Giants, but from 2003 regularly had ERAs over four. When his contract was extended in 2003, he had to accept a significant cut in salary. In August 2004 he was the 23rd pitcher in Japanese professional baseball, the milestone of 200 career wins. 2005 was his last season with more than twenty starts and more than ten wins.

In 2007, Kudō came as compensation for the free agent Ken Kadokura to the Yokohama BayStars , where he completed his last season as a regular starter. After an elbow operation in 2007, he only had three missions in 2008 and was then almost only used as a reliever. In 2009, the BayStars released Kudo, after which he returned to his first team, the Seibu Lions. There he threw only a total of six innings in ten games in the first team in 2010, in August 2010 he was transferred to the second team.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giants pitcher Kudo to get hefty pay cut. In: The Japan Times . December 2, 2003, accessed October 10, 2010 .
  2. ↑ BayStars to get veteran lefty Kudo. In: The Japan Times . January 10, 2007, accessed October 10, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Kudo to undergo elbow surgery. In: The Japan Times . October 11, 2007, accessed October 10, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Kudo left out of Lions' plans for 2011. In: Japan Today / Kyōdō Tsūshin . January 10, 2007, accessed October 10, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Kudo, Kimiyasu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 工藤 公 康 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese baseball player
DATE OF BIRTH May 5th 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Toyoake , Aichi Prefecture