- Masahide Kobayashi
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Masa Kobayashi 
Orix Buffaloes — No. 34 Relief pitcher Born: May 24, 1974 Bats: Right Throws: Right Professional debut April 2, 2008 for the Cleveland Indians MLB statistics Win–Loss 4–5 Earned run average 5.10 Saves 6 Teams - Chiba Lotte Marines (1997–2007)
- Cleveland Indians (2008–2009)
- Yomiuri Giants (2010)
- Orix Buffaloes (2011–present)
Olympic medal record Men's Baseball Bronze Athens 2004 Team Competition Masahide "Masa" Kobayashi (小林 雅英 Kobayashi Masahide, born May 24, 1974 in Ōtsuki, Yamanashi, Japan) is a professional baseball pitcher who currently plays for the Orix Buffaloes.
From 1997-2007, Kobayashi played in the Nippon Professional Baseball league for the Chiba Lotte Marines. From 2008-2009, he played for Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians.
He was a member of the Japanese Olympic baseball team for the 2004 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal.
He led the Pacific League in saves in 2005, and made his 200th save in 2006, becoming the third player in Japanese baseball to reach the mark, after Kazuhiro Sasaki and Shingo Takatsu.
After the 2007 season, he became the only pitcher to record 20 or more saves seven straight years.
On November 2, 2007, he declared his Free Agency and expressed his interest in playing for a major league club for the 2008 season.
On November 20, he signed a two-year, $6,250,000 deal with the Cleveland Indians. The deal included a $3.25m club option for a third year.
During the 2008 season, Kobayashi had an average season, going 4-5 with a 4.53 ERA and 6 saves. He started to falter late during the year and thus, his performance declined.
In 2009, Kobayashi had 10 appearances (9.2 innings) with no decisions or saves. His ERA was a booming 8.38 and on May 16 he was designated for assignment. He accepted and was outrighted to Triple-A Columbus. He was released on July 18, 2009.
He signed a one-year contract with the Yomiuri Giants on December 1, 2009.
External links
- Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
- Japanese league stats and info of Masahide Kobayashi
Orix Buffaloes current roster 00 Tomochika Tsuboi | 0 Makoto Moriyama | 1 Mitsutaka Gotoh | 2 Koji Yamazaki | 3 Lee Seung-Yeop | 4 Shogo Akada | 5 Mike Hessman | 6 Keisuke Kaneko | 9 Tomotaka Sakaguchi | 10 Keiji Obiki | 11 Kazuki Kondoh | 12 Hiroshi Kisanuki | 13 Akio Shimizu | 15 Daisuke Kato | 16 Yoshihisa Hirano | 17 Ryota Katsuki | 18 Mamoru Kishida | 19 Chihiro Kaneko | 20 Hayato Terahara | 22 Daisuke Maeda | 23 Hirotoshi Kitagawa | 25 Masayuki Hasegawa | 27 Takeshi Hidaka | 28 Satoshi Komatsu | 31 Hisao Arakane | 33 So Taguchi | 34 Masahide Kobayashi | 36 Shinji Shimoyama | 40 Kazuya Takamiya | 42 Alfredo Fígaro | 44 Fumihiro Suzuki | 48 Makoto Yoshino | 49 Shinya Nakayama | 50 Evan MacLane | 52 Aarom Baldiris | 54 Hikaru Ito | 55 T-Okada | 61 Park Chan-Ho | 66 Shintaro Yoshida |
Coaching: Manager 81 Akinobu Okada
Categories:- 1974 births
- Living people
- People from Yamanashi Prefecture
- Japanese baseball players
- Baseball players at the 2004 Summer Olympics
- Olympic baseball players of Japan
- Olympic bronze medalists for Japan
- Chiba Lotte Marines players
- Major League Baseball players from Japan
- Cleveland Indians players
- Columbus Clippers players
- Yomiuri Giants players
- Orix Buffaloes players
- Olympic medalists in baseball
- Japanese baseball pitcher stubs
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