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Number of Japanese players in Major League Baseball season-by-season
| Year |
Number of players |
New players[1]
|
| 1964 |
1 |
Masanori Murakami
|
| 1965 |
1 |
None
|
| 1966–1994 |
0 |
None
|
| 1995 |
1 |
Hideo Nomo
|
| 1996 |
2 |
Pitcher Mac Suzuki joins the Seattle Mariners (becoming the first Japanese player to pitch in the American League)
|
| 1997 |
4 |
Pitchers Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Takashi Kashiwada, and Hideki Irabu
|
| 1998 |
5 |
Pitcher Masato Yoshii
|
| 1999 |
8 |
Pitcher Tomo Ohka and Masao Kida
|
| 2000 |
8 |
Pitcher Kazuhiro Sasaki
|
| 2001 |
9 |
Outfielders Ichiro Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Shinjo
|
| 2002 |
13 |
Pitchers Kazuhisa Ishii, Takahito Nomura, Satoru Komiyama, and outfielder So Taguchi
|
| 2003 |
11 |
Pitcher Micheal Nakamura and outfielder Hideki Matsui
|
| 2004 |
13 |
Pitchers Akinori Otsuka, Shingo Takatsu, Kazuhito Tadano, and infielder Kazuo Matsui
|
| 2005 |
15 |
Pitcher Keiichi Yabu and infielders Tadahito Iguchi and Norihiro Nakamura
|
| 2006 |
9 |
Pitcher Takashi Saito and catcher Kenji Johjima
|
| 2007 |
14 |
Pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, Kei Igawa, Masumi Kuwata, and infielder Akinori Iwamura
|
| 2008 |
18 |
Pitchers Kazuo Fukumori, Masahide Kobayashi, Hiroki Kuroda, Keiichi Yabu, Yasuhiko Yabuta, and outfielder Kosuke Fukudome
|
| 2009 |
18 |
Pitchers Kenshin Kawakami, Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa, and Ken Takahashi
|
| 2010 |
14 |
Pitchers Ryota Igarashi and Hisanori Takahashi
|
| 2011 |
13 |
Pitcher Yoshinori Tateyama and Infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka
|
| 2012 |
13[2] |
Outfielder Nori Aoki, infielder Munenori Kawasaki, and pitchers Yu Darvish and Hisashi Iwakuma
|
| 2013 |
11[3] |
Pitcher Kyuji Fujikawa and outfielder Kensuke Tanaka
|
| 2014 |
9[4] |
Pitchers Masahiro Tanaka and Tsuyoshi Wada
|
| 2015 |
9 |
None
|
References
