Every baseball fan knows the Cy Young Award. In Japan there's an equivalent — older, stricter, and far more likely to go unclaimed.
Who was Eiji Sawamura?
The award is named for Eiji Sawamura, the first great pitcher in Japanese baseball history. A power arm for the Tokyo Giants, he is best remembered for striking out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx in succession during a 1934 tour game against an American All-Star team. He was killed in combat in the Pacific in 1944, at 27. In 1947, a Japanese baseball magazine created an award in his name — nine years before MLB established the Cy Young Award in 1956.
The seven criteria
This is what separates the Sawamura from its American cousin. Where the Cy Young goes to any pitcher — starter or reliever — the Sawamura honors only starting pitchers, and a committee picks the winner against seven benchmarks:
- 25 or more games started
- 15 or more wins
- .600 or better winning percentage
- 150 or more strikeouts
- 2.50 or lower ERA
- 8 or more complete games (10 through 2025)
- 180 or more innings pitched (200 through 2025)
Meeting all seven doesn't guarantee the award, and missing one doesn't rule you out — the committee decides. But the thresholds are the reason the award so often goes unclaimed.
Why "no winner" happens
Modern bullpens have made the last two criteria nearly impossible. Starters today average roughly six innings, and almost no one throws 10 complete games. In 2023, not a single Central League pitcher reached 200 innings. So the award has been declared "no winner" in 1971, 1980, 1984, 2000, 2019 and 2024. In response, the committee relaxed the complete-game threshold to 8 and the innings threshold to 180, starting with the 2026 season.
The record holders
Five pitchers have won it three times: Shigeru Sugishita, Masaichi Kaneda, Minoru Murayama, Masaki Saito and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto's run — three straight, 2021 to 2023 — is the most recent, and the most remarkable: his 2023 ERA was 1.21. Only two foreign-born pitchers have ever won it: Gene Bacque in 1964 and Kris Johnson in 2016.
The MLB connection
Winning the Sawamura has long been a ticket to Major League Baseball. Hideo Nomo won in 1990 and crossed to the Dodgers in 1995. Daisuke Matsuzaka won in 2001, Yu Darvish in 2007, Masahiro Tanaka in 2011 and 2013 — his 24-0 season remains one of the great pitching years anywhere — and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in 2023 before signing with the Dodgers. For MLB scouts, the award functions as a quality label.
Older than the Cy Young. Stricter than the Cy Young. Often, simply unclaimed.
How to follow it
The award is announced in early December, after the Japan Series. To understand the pitchers in the running, start with our NPB records guide and NPB-to-MLB history.