Toshifumi Baba

Toshifumi Baba (馬場 敏史)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 8", Weight 170 lb.

• High School Yanagawa High School

• Born February 10, 1965 in Mizuma-gun, Fukuoka Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Toshifumi Baba played in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Baba was drafted by the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in the fifth round of the 1989 NPB draft. He debuted on April 10, 1990, and collected his first hit with the big club from Hisanobu Watanabe on April 14. He spent the first four years of his career in the NPB Farm Leagues, only playingd 131 games combined with the top team. The Hawks then traded Baba to the Orix Blue Wave for Koji Takagi after the 1993 season.

He still only played 59 games in the first year with the Blue Wave. In the 1995 season, the 30-year-old Baba finally took the starting third baseman spot. He hit .262/.320/.328 with a league-leading 29 sacrifice bunts, and won the first NPB Gold Glove award in his career. The Fukuoka native recorded a .255/.285/.369 batting line in 1996, and won the Gold Glove again. Baba struggled in the start of the 1997 season, and the Blue Wave traded him with Hisanori Iwasaki to the Tokyo Yakult Swallows for Hisashi Ogura and Yasutaka Hironaga in the middle of this season.

Baba hit .271/.327/.400 with the Swallows in the 1997 season, but declined to .178/.260/.178 in 1998. He recorded a .251/.325/.304 batting line in 1999, then announced his retirement after hitting .138/.161/.172 in the 2000 season. Baba then became the defense coach for the Blue Wave minor team from 2001 to 2002, and worked for their big club as the same position in 2003. He transferred to the Swallows and served as defense coach from 2004 to 2008, came back to the Orix Buffaloes (the BlueWave having merged with the Kintetsu Buffaloes by now) in 2009, and joined the Yokohama BayStars in 2010. Baba coached the BayStars until the 2015 season, then the Hanwha Eagles signed him in 2016. Baba came back to the NPB and joined the Seibu Lions after the 2016 season, and coached the Lions until 2022. He is the defense coach for the Hanshin Tigers now (2023).

Overall, Baba had hit .242/.301/.315 in 10 seasons in NPB.