Hitoki Iwase

Closing is the most thankless job in baseball. Do it right and nobody notices; blow it once and the whole day is erased. Hitoki Iwase did that job for the Chunichi Dragons from 1999 to 2018, one team, no escape hatch, and finished holding the Nippon Professional Baseball records for both career saves and career appearances. Plenty of pitchers get one untouchable season. He had one too, 46 saves with a 1.88 earned run average in 2005, breaking Kazuhiro Sasaki's single season save record. What gets me is the other nineteen years around it. Walking out for the ninth that many times costs you something mentally long before your arm quits. He came out of Aichi University and stayed with his home region's club, the least glamorous route available, and the numbers argue for him anyway.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Hitoki Iwase

Name (Japanese)

岩瀬仁紀

Reading

いわせ ひとき

Born

November 10, 1974 (age 51)

Origin

Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Height

181 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Tiger

University

Aichi University

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitoki%20Iwase
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B2%A9%E7%80%AC%E4%BB%81%E7%B4%80
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1151605

Tags

• Aichi Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.