Friday, October 15, 2010

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.

2 comments:

Steve said...

Total aside, but did you see that Shimoshikiryo retired as a player recently?

Deanna said...

I did. I was sad to hear that, but it seems he'll be staff with the team, so that's good for him at least. I really liked him :(