List of Yomiuri Giants managers

Japanese man wearing a gray, black and orange uniform walks in front of a blurry crowd
Tatsunori Hara is the current manager of the Yomiuri Giants.

The Yomiuri Giants are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The Giants are members of the Central League (CL) in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager, or more formally, the field manager. The duties of the team manager include team strategy and leadership on and off the field.[1][2] The team has employed 11 different managers since the formation of a professional baseball league in Japan. The current Giants manager is Tatsunori Hara.[3]

Since their inception as the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club in 1934, the Giants have employed 13 managers. The franchise's first managers were Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer Daisuke Miyake and Yoshio Asanuma. After forming an All-Japan team in 1934 to play a Major League Baseball All-Star team in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun-owner Matsutarō Shōriki kept the team together to create the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club in December 1934.[4] The team then traveled to the United States to play against various Minor League and amateur teams in 1935.[5] Encouraged by the success of Shōriki's team, other Japanese teams were formed and Japanese Baseball League was established in 1936.

In the 59 seasons since the NPB was formed, the Giants have had seven different managers. Starting with the NPB's inaugural season, Shigeru Mizuhara managed the team for 11 seasons, earning the team its first four Japan Series titles. Mizuhara's total winning percentage was .638, the highest of any manager in the NPB-era. Following Mizuhara, Tetsuharu Kawakami began an 14-year managerial tenure in 1960, the longest in franchise history. Under Kawakami, the team won 11 more Japan Series titles, including 9 consecutive titles from 1965 to 1973. Kawakami won 1,066 games as the Giants' manager, the most in franchise history.

Table key

# A running total of the number of Giants managers. Any manager who has two or more separate terms is only counted once.
GM Number of regular season games managed; may not equal sum of wins and losses due to tie games
W Number of regular season wins in games managed
L Number of regular season losses in games managed
T Number of regular season ties in games managed
Win% Winning percentage: number of wins divided by number of games managed
PA Playoff appearances: number of years this manager has led the franchise to the playoffs
PW Playoff wins: number of wins this manager has accrued in the playoffs
PL Playoff losses: number of losses this manager has accrued in the playoffs
PT Playoff ties: number of ties this manager has accrued in the playoffs
LC League Championships: number of League Championships, or pennants, achieved by the manager
JS Japan Series: number of Japan Series won by the manager
† Elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame

Managers

Statistics current through the 2011 season

# Manager Seasons GM W L T Win% PA PW PL PT LC JS
1 Fujimoto, SadayoshiSadayoshi Fujimoto† 1936–1942 604 422 168 14 .715 — — — — — —
2 Nakajima, HaruyasuHaruyasu Nakajima† 1943 84 54 27 3 .667 — — — — — —
3 Fujimoto, HideoHideo Fujimoto† 1944–1946 140 83 53 4 .610 — — — — — —
— Nakajima, HaruyasuHaruyasu Nakajima† 1946–1947 224 120 98 6 .550 — — — — — —
4 Mihara, OsamuOsamu Mihara† 1947–1949 393 224 162 7 .580 — — — — — —
5 Mizuhara, ShigeruShigeru Mizuhara† 1950–1960 1,409 881 499 29 .638 8 22 24 2 8 4
6 Kawakami, TetsuharuTetsuharu Kawakami† 1961–1974 1,866 1,066 739 61 .591 11 44 18 0 11 11
7 Nagashima, ShigeoShigeo Nagashima† 1975–1980 780 387 338 55 .534 2 4 8 0 2 0
8 Fujita, MotoshiMotoshi Fujita† 1981–1983 390 211 148 31 .588 2 7 6 0 2 1
9 Oh, SadaharuSadaharu Oh† 1984–1988 650 347 264 39 .568 1 2 4 0 1 0
— Fujita, MotoshiMotoshi Fujita† 1989–1992 520 305 213 2 .589 2 4 7 0 2 1
— Nagashima, ShigeoShigeo Nagashima† 1993–2001 1,202 647 551 4 .540 3 9 8 0 3 2
10 Hara, TatsunoriTatsunori Hara 2002–2003 280 157 118 5 .571 1 4 0 0 1 1
11 Horiuchi, TsuneoTsuneo Horiuchi† 2004–2005 284 133 144 7 .480 — — — — — —
— Hara, TatsunoriTatsunori Hara 2006–present 866 468 371 27 .558 5 15 14 1 3 1

References

General
Specific
  1. ↑ "Manager: Definition | Dictionary.com". Dictionary.Reference.com. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 2006. Retrieved February 24, 2009.
  2. ↑ Dickson, P. (2009). The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (Third ed.). W.W. Norton & Co. p. 530. ISBN 978-0-393-06681-4.
  3. ↑ 読売ジャイアンツ 年度別成績 (1936-2012) [Yomiuri Giants Results By Year (1936–2012)] (in Japanese). Nippon Professional Baseball. Retrieved September 30, 2012.
  4. ↑ Reaves, Joseph A. (2004). Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia. Bison Books. pp. 76–77. ISBN 0-8032-9001-2.
  5. ↑ Fitts, Robert K. (2008). Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. University of Nebraska Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-8032-1381-6.
Nippon Professional Baseball managers by team
Central League Pacific League
Shigekazu Mori (Chunichi Dragons) Tsutomu Ito (Chiba Lotte Marines)
Tomoaki Kanemoto (Hanshin Tigers) Kimiyasu Kudoh (Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks)
Koichi Ogata (Hiroshima Toyo Carp) Hideki Kuriyama (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters)
Mitsuru Manaka (Tokyo Yakult Swallows) Junichi Fukura (Orix Buffaloes)
Alex Ramírez (Yokohama DeNA BayStars) Norio Tanabe (Saitama Seibu Lions)
Yoshinobu Takahashi (Yomiuri Giants) Masataka Nashida (Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles)
Defunct teams:
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.