Nobuyuki Kagawa

Nobuyuki Kagawa (香川 伸行)
(Dokaben)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 7", Weight 211 lb.
• High School Naniwa Shogyo High School

• Born December 19, 1961 in Awa-gun, Tokushima Japan
• Died September 26, 2014 in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Nobuyuki Kagawa played for one decade in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Kagawa was drafted by the Nankai Hawks in the second round of the 1979 NPB draft. He debuted on July 8, 1980 and homered off Takashi Imoto in his first at-bat. He hit .282/.338/.496 with eight homers in 50 games that year, but fell to .246/.305/.394 in 1981 and .240/.270/.380 in 1982. His big year was 1983, when he batted .313/.340/.507 with 15 homers and 61 RBI in 339 at-bats. He made the Pacific League All-Star team and was named to the Best Nine as the PL's top backstop. Had he qualified, he would have been 5th in the league in average behind Hiromitsu Ochiai, Steve Ontiveros, Tommy Cruz and Leron Lee.

Kagawa fell fast, to .215/.260/.300 with five homers in 1984 (again picked as an All-Star). He rebounded to .261/.288/.470 in a bench role in 1985 and put up a .255/.307/.426 line with 13 homers in 282 AB in 1986.

Nobuyuki hit .250/.302/.431 with 11 homers and 32 RBI in 204 at-bats in 1987 then was just 10 for 74 with two doubles, two homers and ten walks in 1988. In his final year, 1989, he batted .220/.266/.322 in 45 games. His career batting line was .255/.299/.417 in 714 games, with 78 homers and 270 RBI in 1,807 at-bats. He later was a baseball commentator. He died of a heart attack in 2014 at the age of 52.

Source: Japanbaseballdaily by Gary Garland