Tadakatsu Kotani

Tadakatsu Kotani (小谷 正勝)

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 5' 10", Weight 182 lb.

• School Kokugakuin University
• High School Akashi High School

• Born April 8, 1945 in Kasai, Hyogo Japan

BR Register page

Biographical Information

Tadakatsu Kotani pitched in Nippon Pro Baseball for a decade and was a one-time All-Star.

Kotani was a first-round pick of the Taiyo Whales in the 1967 NPB draft. He debuted for the Whales in 1968, going 1-0 with a 3.38 ERA in five games. In 1969, he was 2-1 with a 3.54 record, walking 14 in 20 1/3 IP. He was 4-4 with a 2.11 ERA in 53 games (6 starts) in 1970, allowing 78 hits in 115 innings. He led the Central League in pitching appearances, one ahead of Yutaka Enatsu.

1971 was his best year as he went 11-9 with a 2.13 ERA in 58 games, with only 91 hits in 148 innings, though he walked 51. He was 9th in the league in wins, 4th in ERA (behind Kazuhiro Fujimoto, Katsuji Sakai and Kenji Furusawa) and 1st in games pitched (by 10 over Hiromu Matsuoka). In the first 1971 NPB All-Star Game, he wrapped up a historic All-Star no-hitter, following Enatsu, Hidetake Watanabe, Kazumi Takahashi and Hisanobu Mizutani in shutting down the Pacific League stars; he fanned four. He retired Makoto Matsubara, Jitsuo Mizutani, Isao Shibata, Akihiko Oya, Yasuhiro Kunisada, Kunio Fukutomi, Shigeru Takada and Taira Fujita.

Tadakatsu faded to 0-1, 5.00 in 1972 and was 0-3 with a 3.23 ERA in 1973. He had a 0-4, 4.64record for Taiyo in 1974, 3-4 with two saves and a 2.87 ERA in 36 games in 1975, 2-0 with two saves and a 5.04 ERA in 17 games in 1976 (17 BB in 25 IP) and 1-1 with two saves and a 5.16 ERA in 1977 (16 BB in 22 2/3 IP).

Overall, he had gone 24-27 with 6 saves and a 3.06 ERA in 285 NPB games (19 starts). In 549 1/3 IP, he allowed 430 hits and 225 walks while fanning 391. He scouted for a year then became a long-time pitching coach. He worked in NPB or the minors for Taiyo (1979-1986), the Yakult Swallows (1987-1989), the Yokohama BayStars (1990-1995), Yakult again (1996-2002), Yokohama again (2003-2004), the Yomiuri Giants (2005-2011) and the Chiba Lotte Marines (2013- ). He helped develop Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ryota Igarashi, Daisuke Miura, Tetsuya Yamaguchi and Tetsuya Utsumi among others.

Sources

• Michael Eng's database
• Japan Baseball Daily by Gary Garland
• Japanese Wikipedia