Shinichi Murata

Shinichi Murata (村田 真一)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 10", Weight 180 lb.

• High School Takikawa High School

• Born December 5, 1963 in Kobe, Hyogo Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Shinichi Murata has caught in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Murata was picked by the Yomiuri Giants in the 5th round of the 1981 NPB draft. However, since the Giants had All-Star catcher Kazuhiro Yamakura, Murata didn't have many chances at first. He only played 54 games combined in the first six years in his career, and even spent the entire 1986 and 1987 seasons in the NPB Farm Leagues. Murata finally took the starting catcher spot in 1990, and recorded a .273/.358/.541 batting line with 13 homers. He also won his only Best Nine award in his career. In the 1990 Nippon Series, Murata went 2-for-10 and blasted a solo shot off Taigen Kaku in Game 3, but the Giants was still swept by the Seibu Lions. The Kobe native extended his good performance, when he blasted a career-high 17 homers with a .247/.333/.463 in 1991.

Murata only played 32 games in 1992, and Hiromoto Okubo took the starting catcher spot from him. When Okubo suffered a left hand fracture and missed nearly all of the entire 1993 season, Murata was named the everyday catcher again. He came back and hit .236/.299/.357 with 6 homers. Murata was selected into the 1994 NPB All-Star Game, and collected a single from Toyohiko Yoshida in the 5th inning of Game 2. He ended up hitting .248/.331/.376 with 10 homers.

He attended the All-Star Game again in the next summer, but went 0-for-1 since Atsuya Furuta was the starting catcher. He hit .265/.344/.428 with 13 homers in the 1995 season. However, Murata slumped to .208/.284/.332 in 1996, and his batting line declined further to .164/.272/.227 in 1997. The veteran catcher bounced back with a .268/.332/.376batting line, but he then declined and hit .207/.285/.342 in 1999. Murata didn't play well in 2000, only hitting .204/.259/.329 with 7 homers. Unexpectedly, he shined in then 2000 Nippon Series, when he went 6-for-27 with 7 RBI. He even crushed a 2-run homer off Kenichi Wakatabe in Game 5, and won a Nippon Series Outstanding Player Award (which is different from the MVP). The 38-year-old batted .179/.255/.345 in the 2001 season, and he announced his retirement after this season.

After retiring, Murata was the battery coach for the Giants from 2002 to 2003, from 2006 to 2007 and in 2011. He was the hitting coach for them from 2008 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2014. In 2015, he was named the bench coach for the Giants, and worked for them until the 2018 season.

Overall, Murata had hit .234/.308/.383 with 98 homers in 15 seasons in NPB.