Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes times. Bryant also struck out countless times, and holds the top four spots on the single-season strikeout records in Nippon Professional Baseball. Pitcher Hideo Nomo starred for the Buffaloes from 1990–1994 before he exercised a loophole in his contract and "retired," allowing him to sign with MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers. The subsequent wave of players moving to Major League Baseball has become a fixture of Japanese professional baseball. Tuffy Rhodes played for the Buffaoes for eight seasons from 1996–2003, hitting 288 home runs over that span. In the season, he hit his 55th homer to tie Sadaharu Oh's Japanese League
Eiji Sawamura Award only Central League pitchers were eligible to win the award from (the first year the NPB employed the current two-league format) to . The first pitcher to be bestowed the honors from the Pacific League was Hideo Nomo for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in . No pitcher was found to be sufficiently deserving of the award in , , , and . The award has been presented to two pitchers in the same season twice (, ). While it is sometimes assumed that the award was introduced following the creation of the Cy Young Award in Major League Baseball, the Cy