Teppei Tsuchiya

Teppei Tsuchiya (土谷 鉄平)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 10", Weight 171 lb.
• High School Tsukumi High School

• Born December 27, 1982 in Oita, Oita Japan

BR Register page

Biographical Information

Teppei Tsuchiya once won a Pacific League batting title in his 12-year career in NPB.

Tsuchiya was named after a comic book character. He hit .551 with 32 homers in his high school career. He was a 5th-round pick of the Chunichi Dragons in the 2000 NPB draft. He made his debut in Nippon Pro Baseball in 2004, going 5 for 27 with two doubles, 3 steals and 9 runs. He was used primarily as a defensive substitute and pinch-runner. In his first NPB at-bat, he had a pinch-hit single off Takeharu Kato. He only played two games and did not bat in 2005.

Feeling relatively set with an outfield of Alex Ochoa, Kosuke Fukudome and Kazuki Inoue, Chunichi sold Tsuchiya to the Rakuten Golden Eagles. Rakuten made Tsuchiya their main center fielder, replacing veteran Koichi Sekikawa. On April 22, he hit his first career homer, the only run in a 1-0 win over Fumiya Nishiguchi. One low point came when he struck out in a Nippon Pro Baseball record 9 straight plate appearances. He hit .303/.352/.396 and tied for the Pacific League lead with 7 triples in 2006 (even with Shogo Akada, Munenori Kawasaki and Tsuyoshi Nishioka). He was for 9th in the league in average, between Hiroyuki Nakajima and Arihito Muramatsu. He played in the 2006 Nichi-Bei Series. Tsuchiya also set the NPB record as he was struck out for 9 straight at-bats.

Tsuchiya hit .254/.311/.364 in an off-year in 2007, though he did show more pop with 10 home runs after 2 the year before. He made the PL All-Star team, and he was 0-for-2 in the 2007 NPB All-Star Games. Teppei rebounded in 2008 to bat .270/.345/.403, and he collected 29 doubles and six triples in 124 games. He was 6th in triples, tied with Kawasaki, Nishioka, Shunichi Nemoto, Yasuyuki Kataoka and Tomotaka Sakaguchi. In 2009, Tsuchiya was even better. He hit .327/.391/.504 with 13 steals (in 18 tries), 13 triples, 12 home runs and 84 runs. He led the PL in average, .010 ahead of Sakaguchi, the runner-up. He was also among the leaders in hits (162, 4th between Kensuke Tanaka and Yuya Hasegawa), runs (5th between Takeya Nakamura and Sakaguchi), triples (1st), total bases (250, 5th), OBP (3rd, between Tadahito Iguchi and Atsunori Inaba) and slugging (7th). He won his only Best Nine.

The Oita native was voted into the 2010 NPB All-Star Games, and he went 1-for-3 with a double against Shun Tono in Game 2. He extended his solid performance in 2010, and he collected 7 triples with a .318/.391/.464 batting line. Tsuchiya was 6th in batting (between Hitoshi Tamura and Kawasaki), 4th in triples and 7th in OBP (between Takumi Kuriyama and Nakajima). He slumped to .228/.282/.272 in 2011, and his batting line was .251/.285/.302 in 121 games in 2012. Teppei only played 54 games with a .240/.311/.322 batting line in 2013, and he mainly stayed in the minor leagues. Rakuten then traded him to the Orix Buffaloes for Mitsutaka Goto, and he hit .227/.313/.352 in 50 games in 2014. Tsuchiya was 3-for-22 in 2015, and he announced his retirement. He was a minor league fielding coach for the Golden Eagles in 2019, and he became their bating coach from 2020 to 2021.

Overall, Tsuchiya hit .278/.339/.391 with 878 hits, 42 triples and 42 homers in 12 seasons in NPB. As of 2025, he was 81st in triples in NPB history, tying Yasuya Hondo, Jun Hakota, Jiro Kanayama, Akira Owada, Tetsuya Iida, Yutaka Wada, Katsuya Kakunaka and Kikuji Hirayama.

Sources

• Wiki Japan
• Japanbaseballdaily.com
• Chinese Wiki Baseball

Related Sites

• Official website