Saw a stat showing Chipper’s struggles vs. Hiroki Kuroda that got me curious. I knew that he’s said Hideo Nomo was the pitcher he hated facing most. So with the help of Baseball Reference I looked up Chipper’s numbers vs all the Japanese pitchers he’s faced. (yes, this just proves how little of a life I have) As I suspected, they’re far worse than his career standards.
Why they’re poor is an interesting question. Most, but not all, of the pitchers listed were not very successful on this side of the Pacific, so if anything you’d expect him to excel against weaker competition. Chipper will readily say he loves hitting fastballs. Asian pitchers are long known for their reliance on breaking pitches- sinkers, slider, shuutos, etc,,, perhaps this caused the imbalance?
Hideo Nomo 4-37, HR, 3 RBI, 7 BB
Tomo Ohka 7-33, 3 HR, 4 RBI, 4 BB
Masato Yoshii 8-24, HR, 3 RBI, 7 BB
Hiroki Kuroda 2-9 2B
Daisuke Matsuzaka 2-7, 2 2B
Takashi Saito 1-5, BB
Hidecki Irabu 1-4
Kaz Ishii 1-3, HR, 3 RBI, 3 BB
Takashi Kashiwada 1-3, RBI
Shingo Takatsu 1-3
Hisanori Takahashi 0-3, BB, RBI
Satoro Komiyama 1-2, HR, 2 RBI
Akinori Otsuka 1-2, 2B, 1 BB
Hideki Okajima 0-2
Keiichi Yabu 1-1
Koji Uehara 0-1
Mac Suzuki 0-1
Career vs Japanese .229/341/.407 7 homers
Career as a whole .304/.402/532
*does not include tonight’s game vs. Kuroda
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