Kazunori Yamamoto (01)

Kazunori Yamamoto (山本 和範)

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 5' 10", Weight 165 lb.

• High School Tobata Commercial High School

• Born October 18, 1957 in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Japan

BR Register page

Biographical Information

Kazunori Yamamoto was a five-time All-Star in 19 seasons in Nippon Pro Baseball. He was deaf in one ear.

Yamamoto was drafted by the Kintetsu Buffaloes as a pitcher in the 1976 NPB draft. He was an outfielder when he first made it to NPB, going 2 for 17 with a home run (off Masayuki Matsunuma) and four walks in 24 games in 1980. He went 4 for 21 with a double and four walks in a similar bench role in 1981 then was released. Signed by the Nankai Hawks, he hit .233/.308/.349 in 149 plate appearances over 51 games in 1983. At age 26 in 1984, he batted .306/.383/.521 with 16 homers, 59 runs, 58 RBI and 15 steals (in 19 tries) in 363 plate appearances over 115 games. Had he qualified, he would have been 8th in the Pacific League in average. He tied Keijiro Yumioka and Chris Nyman for 9th in the PL in swipes.

Kazunori became a starter in 1985 yet had fewer home runs (15) and steals (14) while hitting .265/.346/.413. He was second in the PL with 13 times hit-by-pitch (two behind Eiji Kanamori). In 1986, he improved to .294/.370/.498 with 19 home runs, 76 runs and 51 walks. He was 5th in the PL in doubles (26, tied with Kenichi Sato) and 10th in walks. He made his first PL All-Star team that year. He did win his only Gold Glove, joining Yoshihiro Nishioka and Masafumi Yamamori in being so honored by the PL. The next year, he slumped to a .252/.334/.356 batting line with only 7 home runs. He rebounded to hit .321/.394/.606 with 21 dingers in only 327 at-bats in 1988. He tied Hiromichi Ishige for 8th in the league in home runs (his only time in the top 10) and his 5 triples tied for second, four behind leader Daijiro Oishi. Had he qualified, he would have been third in both slugging (behind Hiromitsu Kadota and Ty Van Burkleo) and average (after Hideaki Takazawa and Hiromi Matsunaga).

In 1989, the Hawks became the Daiei Hawks and Yamamoto became primarily a DH. He made his second All-Star team and hit .308/.402/.472 with 13 home runs and 19 stolen bases (in 27 tries). He was 4th in the league in average (after Boomer Wells, Norio Tanabe and Matsunaga), 4th in OBP (behind Matsunaga, Kazuhiro Kiyohara and Kadota), 7th in steals and tied for 9th in doubles (23). He only played 70 games in 1990, presumably due to injury; he produced at a .304/.410/.473 clip and made the All-Star team. On June 16, he hit his 100th career homer, taking Hisanobu Watanabe deep.

The 33-year-old veteran batted .286/.368/.422 in a part-time role in 1991. He hit .265/.348/.429 with 18 home runs in 1992. He was 10th in the league with 57 walks and tied for 5th with 6 times hit by pitch. An All-Star for the fourth time in 1993, he finished the year with a batting line of .301/.395/.447. He was second in OBP (just behind Hatsuhiko Tsuji), 4th in average (after Tsuji, Hiroo Ishii and Ishige) and 9th in OPS (between Koji Akiyama and Yasuo Fujii). On June 11, he got his 1,000th hit, off Kazuhiko Ushijima.

In 1994, the old-timer kept it up (.317/.425/.455, 77 BB). He was again second in OBP (20 points behind Ichiro Suzuki) as well as second in average (a more distant 68 points shy of Ichiro), 4th in walks (77, between Akiyama and Ishii), 9th in hits (133, between Kiyoshi Hatsushiba and Tetsuro Hirose) and 6th in OPS (between Kevin Reimer and Akiyama). He was neither an All-Star nor a Best Nine (Ichiro, Makoto Sasaki and Reimer were the selected PL flyhawks). He slumped to .201/.282/.230 with no home runs in 46 games in 1995.

Kintetsu, having given up on Yamamoto 14 years earlier, signed the 38-year-old for 1996 and he showed new life. He hit .266/.382/.461 with 14 home runs in 319 plate appearances and made his fifth All-Star squad. In the first 1996 NPB All-Star Game, he hit a three-run pinch-hit homer off Keiichi Yabu to win MVP honors. That year, he became the 103th NPB player to 150 home runs, by taking Kazuhiro Takeda deep in April. He hit .264/.360/.436 in 1997, splitting the DH role with Phil Clark. Clark got the bulk of the work in 1998, though Yamamoto hit a solid .269/.371/.403 in 140 plate appearances. He played one game in 1999 and went out with a bang, going 2 for 4 with a home run off Takayuki Shinohara in his last at-bat in NPB.

Overall, he had batted .283/.373/.448 with 237 doubles, 175 home runs, 698 runs, 669 RBI, 654 walks and 102 steals (in 157 tries) in 1,618 NPB games. Through 2011, he was 33rd in league history in hit-by-pitch (83), 65th in walks (between Kazuhiro Wada and Shoichi Busujima) and 69th in OBP (between Tsutomu Wakamatsu and Mike Reinbach).

Sources

• Japanbaseballdaily.com by Gary Garland
• Michael Eng's Japanese database
• Japanese Wikipedia entry