Eigoro Mogi

Eigoro Mogi (茂木 栄五郎)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 7", Weight 165 lb.

• School Waseda University
• High School Toin Gakuen High School

• Born February 14, 1994 in Koganei, Tokyo Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Eigoro Mogi has played in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Mogi was on the Waseda team that won the 2012 All-Japan University Baseball Championship Series. He played for Japan in the 2014 Haarlem Baseball Week. He led the 2015 Universiade with a .462 average. He was taken by the Rakuten Golden Eagles in the 3rd round of the 2015 NPB draft.

He started on Opening Day, a first for a Rakuten rookie shortstop. He tripled off Rick van den Hurk for his first NPB hit and got his first NPB homer off Isamu Sato. He became the first NPB player since Masahiro Kawai in 1992 to hit two inside-the-park homers in a season. He finished the season at .278/.330/.408 with 7 triples. He tied Masahiro Nishino for the Pacific League lead in three-baggers, was 8th with 21 sacrifice hits and led shortstops with 19 errors (fielding .964 there). He came close in voting for the 2016 Pacific League Rookie of the Year Award, losing to Hirotoshi Takanashi 131 votes to 116.

Mogi made the PL team for the 2017 NPB All-Star Game but had to withdraw due to injury and was replaced by Sosuke Genda. He finished the 2017 season at .296/.370/.497 with 17 dingers. He finished third in average (between Shogo Akiyama and Yuki Yanagita), 6th in OBP (between Takahiro Okada and Ginji Akaminai) and 4th in slugging (between Alfredo Despaigne and Zelous Wheeler), impressive numbers for a shortstop. He did not make the Best Nine as Kenta Imamiya was voted the PL's top shortstop, 90 votes to Mogi's 87 while Genda was also close at 81. The Tokyo native led off a playoff game against the Seibu Lions with a first-pitch homer on October 15, joining Takumi Kuriyama and Ikuhiro Kiyota as the only players to do so. Three days later, he hit his second lead-off homer of the Series; Kiyota was the only other player with two lead-off homers in the same playoff series.

The Tokyo native battled injuries and slumps in 2018 (.247/.328/.349, 7 HR). He rebounded and was the starting shortstop for the PL in 2019 NPB All-Star Game 1, being retired by Shota Imanaga, Shun Yamaguchi and Scott McGough before Genda took over in a 6-3 win. He finished the 2019 campaign with a .282/.358/.421 batting line, 28 doubles, 6 triples, 13 homers, 66 walks and 86 runs while fielding .978 at short and 1.000 at third (44 chances). He was among the PL leaders in runs (9th, between Haruki Nishikawa and Taishi Ota), doubles (tied Ota for 7th), triples (tied Genda and Nishikawa for second) and walks (10th).

He split 2020 more evenly between SS and 3B, batting .301/.396/.457 with 43 runs and 39 walks in 73 games (the season being shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic). Had he qualified, he would have been 5th in average, between Nishikawa and Daichi Suzuki.