List of Yomiuri Giants managers

File:Giants hara 88.jpg

Tatsunori Hara is the current manager of the Yomiuri Giants.

The Yomiuri Giants are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The Giants are members of the Central League (CL) in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager, or more formally, the field manager. The duties of the team manager include team strategy and leadership on and off the field. The team has employed 11 different managers since the formation of a professional baseball league in Japan. The current Giants manager is Tatsunori Hara.

Since their inception as the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club in 1934, the Giants have employed 13 managers. The franchise's first managers were Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer Daisuke Miyake and Yoshio Asanuma. After forming an All-Japan team in 1934 to play a Major League Baseball All-Star team in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun-owner Matsutarō Shōriki kept the team together to create the Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club in December 1934. The team then traveled to the United States to play against various Minor League and amateur teams in 1935. Encouraged by the success of Shōriki's team, other Japanese teams were formed and Japanese Baseball League was established in 1936.

In the 59 seasons since the NPB was formed, the Giants have had seven different managers. Starting with the NPB's inaugural season, Shigeru Mizuhara managed the team for 11 seasons, earning the team its first four Japan Series titles. Mizuhara's total winning percentage was .638, the highest of any manager in the NPB-era. Following Mizuhara, Tetsuharu Kawakami began an 14-year managerial tenure in 1960, the longest in franchise history. Under Kawakami, the team won 11 more Japan Series titles, including 9 consecutive titles from 1965 to 1973. Kawakami won 1,066 games as the Giants' manager, the most in franchise history.

Table key

#	A running total of the number of Giants managers. Any manager who has two or more separate terms is only counted once.
GM	Number of regular season games managed; may not equal sum of wins and losses due to tie games
W	Number of regular season wins in games managed
L	Number of regular season losses in games managed
T	Number of regular season ties in games managed
Win%	Winning percentage: number of wins divided by number of games managed
PA	Playoff appearances: number of years this manager has led the franchise to the playoffs
PW	Playoff wins: number of wins this manager has accrued in the playoffs
PL	Playoff losses: number of losses this manager has accrued in the playoffs
PT	Playoff ties: number of ties this manager has accrued in the playoffs
LC	League Championships: number of League Championships, or pennants, achieved by the manager
JS	Japan Series: number of Japan Series won by the manager
†	Elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame

Managers

Statistics current through the 2011 season

#	Manager	Seasons	GM	W	L	T	Win%	PA	PW	PL	PT	LC	JS
1	Sadayoshi Fujimoto†	1936–1942	604	422	168	14	.715	—	—	—	—	—	—
2	Haruyasu Nakajima†	1943	84	54	27	3	.667	—	—	—	—	—	—
3	Hideo Fujimoto†	1944–1946	140	83	53	4	.610	—	—	—	—	—	—
—	Haruyasu Nakajima†	1946–1947	224	120	98	6	.550	—	—	—	—	—	—
4	Osamu Mihara†	1947–1949	393	224	162	7	.580	—	—	—	—	—	—
5	Shigeru Mizuhara†	1950–1960	1,409	881	499	29	.638	8	22	24	2	8	4
6	Tetsuharu Kawakami†	1961–1974	1,866	1,066	739	61	.591	11	44	18	0	11	11
7	Shigeo Nagashima†	1975–1980	780	387	338	55	.534	2	4	8	0	2	0
8	Motoshi Fujita†	1981–1983	390	211	148	31	.588	2	7	6	0	2	1
9	Sadaharu Oh†	1984–1988	650	347	264	39	.568	1	2	4	0	1	0
—	Motoshi Fujita†	1989–1992	520	305	213	2	.589	2	4	7	0	2	1
—	Shigeo Nagashima†	1993–2001	1,202	647	551	4	.540	3	9	8	0	3	2
10	Tatsunori Hara	2002–2003	280	157	118	5	.571	1	4	0	0	1	1
11	Tsuneo Horiuchi†	2004–2005	284	133	144	7	.480	—	—	—	—	—	—
—	Tatsunori Hara	2006–present	866	468	371	27	.558	5	15	14	1	3	1

References

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