List of Foriegn NPB Players?

Well, here's a list of the 56 foreign players playing in Japan for 2010 (so far):

+--------------------------+-----------------------------+------+
| Country                  | Name                        | Team |
+--------------------------+-----------------------------+------+
| Brazil                   | Fernandes, Rafael           | YAK  | 
| Brazil                   | Matsumoto, Yuichi           | YAK  | 
| Canada                   | Guiel, Aaron                | YAK  | 
| China                    | Zhu, Da-Wei                 | SEI  | 
| Cuba                     | Muniz, Juan                 | LOT  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Blanco, Tony                | CHU  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Cesar, Dionys               | CHU  | 
| Dominican Republic       | de la Cruz, Eulo            | YAK  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Nelson, Maximo              | CHU  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Obispo, Wirfin              | YOM  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Ortiz, Jose                 | SFT  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Soriano, Dioni              | HIR  | 
| Dominican Republic       | Valdez, Edward              | CHU  | 
| Korea                    | Kim, Mu-yon                 | SFT  | 
| Korea                    | Lee, Hye-cheon              | YAK  | 
| Korea                    | Lee, Seung-Yeop             | YOM  | 
| Korea                    | Lim, Chang-Yong             | YAK  | 
| Korea                    | Shin, Son-hyon              | HIR  | 
| Puerto Rico              | Alvarado, Giancarlo         | HIR  | 
| Puerto Rico              | Gonzalez, Dicky             | YOM  | 
| Taiwan                   | Chen, Wei-Yin               | CHU  | 
| Taiwan                   | Cheng, Kai-wen              | HAN  | 
| Taiwan                   | Hsu, Ming-Chieh             | SEI  | 
| Taiwan                   | Lee, Tu-Hsuan               | SFT  | 
| Taiwan                   | Lee, Yu-Hung                | YOM  | 
| Taiwan                   | Lin, Weizhu                 | HAN  | 
| Taiwan                   | Lin, Yi-Hao                 | YOM  | 
| Taiwan                   | Shoh, Ikketsu               | HAN  | 
| Taiwan                   | Yan, Yao-Shun               | SFT  | 
| Taiwan                   | Yang, Dai-Kang (Chung-Shou) | NIP  | 
| United States of America | Barnette, Tony              | YAK  | 
| United States of America | Brazell, Craig              | HAN  | 
| United States of America | Carlyle, Buddy              | NIP  | 
| United States of America | Corey, Bryan                | LOT  | 
| United States of America | D'Antona, Jamie             | YAK  | 
| United States of America | Falkenborg, Brian           | SFT  | 
| United States of America | Fossum, Casey               | HAN  | 
| United States of America | Gonzalez, Edgar             | YOM  | 
| United States of America | Graman, Alex Joseph         | SEI  | 
| United States of America | Greisinger, Seth            | YOM  | 
| United States of America | Houlton, Dennis             | SFT  | 
| United States of America | Kroon, Marc                 | YOM  | 
| United States of America | LaRocca, Greg               | ORX  | 
| United States of America | Leicester, Johnathan        | ORX  | 
| United States of America | Messenger, Randy            | HAN  | 
| United States of America | Murton, Matt                | HAN  | 
| United States of America | Phillips, Andy              | RAK  | 
| United States of America | Randolph, Stephen           | YOK  | 
| United States of America | Rasner, Darrell             | RAK  | 
| United States of America | Schultz, Mike               | HIR  | 
| United States of America | Sikorski, Brian             | SEI  | 
| United States of America | Sledge, Terrmel             | YOK  | 
| Venezuela                | Baldiris, Aaron             | ORX  | 
| Venezuela                | Cabrera, Alex               | ORX  | 
| Venezuela                | Ramirez, Alex               | YOM  | 
| Venezuela                | Romero, Levi                | YOM  | 
+--------------------------+-----------------------------+------+

Is that what you're looking for? I'm afraid I don't have all foreigners throughout history.

No Lambin or Barnam?

I don't know about a Barnam, but Lambin was too supportive of Bobby for the Lotte front office to keep him on. If that statement doesn't make sense to you, please read Robert Whiting's 4 part series (Jan. 17 to Feb. 7, 2010) in The Japan Times (archived here).

I think he meant Gary Burnham. All the same, he was seen as too supportive of Bobby Valentine as well.

Chase Lambin, in case your wondering, ended up with the Washington Nationals. Haven't heard anything on Burnham.

Burnham hit .218, wouldn't have been invited back even if he hated Bobby V.

I just came across an article on Baseball de World that says that Burnham has signed with the Godo Knights in Italy.

Fiorentino, USA and Huber, Australia for Carp.

I thought you had more than just the current players in the players section on this site before.

Would like to find a list from the 90's on.

Need to get rid of some baseball cards but would like pull some NPB guys for my nephew in Japan first.

Don't know if something like that is online, if there is a site in Japanese, that would be helpful, too.

Thanks for posting the current list.

OK. I've put together a complete list of the foreign players that I have.



If you want to download it, it's available in Open Document Format here. ODF is supported by Neo Office on Macs, OpenOffice on *NIX, Intel Macs, and Windows, KSpread on *NIX, or several other ODF supporting applications on many environments. (All of the above are free, Open Source applications. There are also commercial alternatives and plugins for MS Office if you're so inclined.) As the data in OpenDocument is all XML based, it can also be accessed using native XML databases such as eXist. (Please feel free to drop me a line if you're interested in consulting along those lines.)

Thank you very much! That will give me plenty to go on.

There are some older guys in there I wouldn't have expected, but doesn't look like many of them stayed very long.

Getting started on this. Some interesting cards I came across so far are a 1971 Bobby Mitchell and a Billy Bean. Also found several Tuffy Rhodes and Bobby Rose among others.

You forgot Todd Linden.

Miller-san put the above data to a great use in an article at Baseball de World. It always makes me happy to see data requests actually get used. Keep up the good work.

Shin (HIR) was drafted. Does he count against the foreign roster limit?

Looks like the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) on foreign players needs to be updated.

To the best of my knowledge, a rule was added a few years ago that anyone who signs with a team via the draft system is automatically considered a non-foreign player with regard to the foreign player limits. If that is the case (which I believe it is), that would include the Korean born Shin Son-hyon, who graduated from Kyoto International High School and was Hiroshima's #4 draft pick two falls ago.