Tokyo Big 6: The I-Lost-To-Todai Club

Sometimes bizarre thoughts go through my head, but after Yuki Saitoh, poised to go pro, lost a game to Todai two weeks ago, everyone was thinking that was the most improbable thing that could ever happen this semester -- Tokyo winning a game, Saitoh losing it, the winning pitcher being a freshman, etc.

Well, I went back and looked at Todai's record over the last decade, which was a whopping 15 wins, 209 losses, and 2 ties. But perhaps more interesting is who the losing pitchers were in those 15 wins...

Here are the records of Todai's 15 wins in the past decade. In 2002 they even took a series point from Rikkio! (That's the only one they got in the entire decade, though.)

            Win  Loss  Tie   Opponent   WP               LP
2000 Spring  1    10    0    Meiji      Inoue 井上       Ohsuka 大須賀
2000 Fall    0    10    0                                          
2001 Spring  0    10    0                                          
2001 Fall    1    10    0    Rikkio     Koyano 児矢野    Hayamizu 速水
2002 Spring  0    10    0                                          
2002 Fall    2    9     0    Rikkio     Asaoka 浅岡      Tadano 多田野
                             Rikkio     Asaoka 浅岡      Tadano 多田野
2003 Spring  0    10    0                                          
2003 Fall    1    10    0    Keio       Masuoka 升岡     Kobayashi  小林康
2004 Spring  3    10    0    Waseda     Kimura 木村      Satake  佐竹
                             Hosei      Matsuka 松家     Tsuruoka 鶴岡
                             Rikkio     Matsuka 松家     Kobayashi 小林太志
2004 Fall    2    10    0    Meiji      Matsuka 松家     Tanno 丹野
                             Rikkio     Kimura 木村      Kobayashi 小林太志 
2005 Spring  1    10    0    Hosei      Kusui 楠井       Shimoshikiryo 下敷領
2005 Fall    1    10    0    Waseda     Matsuoka 松岡    Miyamoto 宮本
2006 Spring  0    10    0                                          
2006 Fall    0    10    0                                          
2007 Spring  0    10    1                                          
2007 Fall    1    10    0    Rikkio     Shigenobu 重信   Nihira 仁平
2008 Spring  0    10    0                            
2008 Fall    2    10    1    Keio       Y.Suzuki 鈴木優  Aizawa 相澤
                             Hosei      Y.Suzuki 鈴木優  Komatsu 小松
2009 Spring  0    10    0 
2009 Fall    0    10    0 
2010 Spring  0    10    0 

13 pitchers were charged with losses to Todai in the last decade before this semester. (And two more, Futagami and Kagami, could have ended up with losses had their teams not tied the game up and stayed there.)

Look at these losing pitcher names, though! Almost half of them went pro. Kazuhito Tadano, Futoshi Kobayashi, Yuta Shimoshikiryo, Ken Miyamoto, Takeshi Komatsu...

And after all, Takahiro Matsuka ALSO went pro, the 5th one in history from Todai to ever do so, after coming out of college with a stellar 3-17 record.

I guess my point here is that Saitoh is in better company than one would think, is all.