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
Hideo Nomo (while finishing second in walks) and was second with a 2.54 ERA. He struck out 11.101 batters per 9 innings to break Sandy Koufax's single-season franchise record of 10.546 in . He also started that year's All-Star Game, striking out three of the six batters he faced. But he only barely won NL Rookie of the Year honors that year over future MVP Chipper Jones, as many voters felt that his Japanese success made him anything but a rookie, although he qualified by Major League rules. Nomo had another fine season in which was capped by a no-hitter thrown on