Tomohiro Abe

Tomohiro Abe (安部 友裕)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 11", Weight 176 lb.
• High School Fukuoka Jyoto High School
• Born June 24, 1989 in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Utility infielder Tomohiro Abe played in the NPB for 11 years.

Abe battled injuries in high school but still hit 39 home runs. The Hiroshima Carp took him in the first round of the 2007 NPB draft (the NPB draft then had different sections for high school and college players, so he was their first high school pick). He spent several years in the minors before coming up in 2011; his first at-bat came as a pinch-hitter for Takahiro Aoki and he fanned against Shota Oba. His first hit was off Shunsuke Watanabe. He finished the season 3-for-20 with two errors.

In 2012, Abe hit .252/.293/.303 in 119 at-bats, with his first dinger coming off Futoshi Kobayashi. He fielded .988 at 2B, his main position, where he was third-stringer behind Akihiro Higashide and Ryosuke Kikuchi. The next year, he had 123 ABs but hit only .220/.287/.276. With Kikuchi becoming the starter at second, he primarily backed up Eishin Soyogi at short and fielded .959 there. He was 1 for 3 in 2014 and did not take the field. He did do well in the minors that year, hitting .308/.410/.364 to finish third in the Western League in average. His 8 triples and 26 steals led the loop.

Abe hit .243/.254/.243 in 26 games for the Carp in 2015, and he secured the starting third baseman spot in 2016. He hit .282/.327/.429 with 6 homers in 117 games, and he went 4-for-12 in the 2016 Japan Series; the Carp were beaten by the Nippon Ham Fighters in 6 games. Abe had his career year in 2017, and he hit .310/.354/.400 with 4 triples. He was 3rd in batting average in the Central League, between Yohei Oshima and Yoshihiro Maru. He won 15 points in the CL MVP voting, ranking 9th and between Ryosuke Kikuchi and Yusuke Nomura

The Fukuoka native suffered from a right hand injury in 2018, so he only played 72 games with a .236/.306/.377 batting line. He returned in the 2018 Japan Series, and he was the Carp's starting third baseman in all 6 games. He was 1-for-8 in the first two games, but he crushed 2 homers (against Ariel Miranda and Ren Kajiya) with 5 RBI in Game 3. He and Seiya Suzuki became the first pair of teammates to both crush two homers in a Nippon Series game. He was 1-for-11 in the rest of the series, and the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks beat the Carp in 6 games. Abe crushed a career-high 8 homers in 2019, and his batting line was .254/.315/.390. He slumped to .184/.262/.263 in 2020, and he recorded a .252/.320/.305 batting line in 2021. Abe spent his entire 2022 season in the minors, then he announced his retirement.

Overall, Abe hit .264/.317/.363 with 443 hits and 25 homers in 11 seasons in NPB.

Sources

• Wiki Japan
• NPB.com