Batting average .240 Role Baseball player Salary 190 million JPY (2013) Name Motonobu Tanishige Career start 1989 | RBI 1040 Weight 81 kg Home runs 229 Height 1.76 m | |
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Current team Chunichi Dragons (#27 / Catcher) Similar People Masahiro Yamamoto, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Kazuhiro Wada, Masato Matsui, Masahiko Morino | ||
The Pro Yakyu Report Vol. 1.48 - Tanishige's Value
Motonobu Tanishige (谷繁 元信, born December 21, 1970, in Hiroshima) was the former manager for the Chunichi Dragons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He was the Dragons' player-manager from 2014 to 2015.
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Tanishige played 27 seasons in NPB. Making his debut for the Taiyo Whales in 1989 at age 18, he played for the Whales/BayStars franchise for 13 years. Moving to the Dragons in 2002, through 2015 he has played for that franchise for 14 seasons. He has played in five Japan Series, and one World Baseball Classic, in 2006, when Japan won the championship.
Professional career
Tanishige performed well in the 2004 Japan Series (which the Dragons lost 4-games-to-3 to the Seibu Lions), including hitting his first career grand slam.
In 2015, Tanishige broke the NPB record for games played, passing Katsuya Nomura with 3,018 — he has since extended the record. Tanishige is second on the career strikeout list with 1,838. With more than 200 career home runs, Tanshige is a member of Meikyukai.
Managerial career
After retiring from playing at the end of the 2015 season, Tanishige became full-time manager of the Dragons. After a rocky start to the season followed by a lacklustre continuation following the All-Star break, on August 10, 2016 he was relieved from his duties alongside fielding coach Takahiro Saeki. He was replaced by head coach, Shigekazu Mori for the remainder of the season.