Taisei Takagi

Taisei Takagi (髙木 大成)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 11", Weight 187 lb.

• School Keio University
• High School Toin Gakuen High School

• Born December 7, 1973 in Hachioji, Tokyo Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Taisei Takagi played in Nippon Pro Baseball and for the Japan national baseball team.

Takagi represented Japan in the 1994 Baseball World Cup, hitting .438/.471/.688 with six runs in seven games, backing up Takayuki Takabayashi in right and Hideaki Okubo at catcher for the Bronze Medal winners. He then won Gold in the 1994 Asian Games and 1995 Asian Championship. He blasted a solo shot off Sung-min Cho in the final of the Asian Games. The Seibu Lions drafted him in the first round of the 1995 NPB draft. Takagi was the backup catcher to Tsutomu Ito in his rookie year, hitting .278/.315/.376 with 4 homers. He was turned into a first baseman in the next year, and hit .295/.357/.414 with 7 homers in the 1997 season. He was selected into the 1997 NPB All-Star Game (went 0-for-1) and won his first NPB Gold Glove award as a first baseman. He was 7th in runs, 19 behind Ichiro Suzuki. Takagi attended the 1998 NPB All-Star Game, and hit a single off Masaki Saito in the 5th inning of Game 1. He ended up batting .276/.356/.437 with a career-high 17 homers, and won the Gold Glove again in 1998. He was 6th in RBI (44 behind Nigel Wilson), 9th in hits (42 behind Suzuki) and 10th in runs (22 behind Kazuo Matsui). Takagi went 4-for-22 in the 1998 Nippon Series, and blasted a 2-run home run off Hiroki Nomura in Game 1. Takagi suffered a right ankle injury, and was limited into 94 games played in the 1999 season. He still attended the 1999 NPB All-Star Game, hit a single off Kazuhiro Takeda in Game 2, then collected another single from Naoya Shimada in Game 3. The Tokyo native then had several injuries, which made him only play 67, 36 and 56 games from 2001 to 2003. Takagi missed the entire 2004 season, and announced his retirement after the 2005 season.

Overall, Takagi had hit .263/.336/.399 in 9 seasons in NPB.