Wladimir Balentien

Wladimir "Coco" Balentien is the clearest argument I know against judging a hitter by one league's stat line. Born in Willemstad, Curaçao, in 1984, he passed through Major League Baseball with the Seattle Mariners and the Cincinnati Reds without ever becoming the centre of anything. In American terms he was a fringe outfielder who did not stick. Then he crossed the Pacific, joined the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, and in 2013 hit 60 home runs in a single Nippon Professional Baseball season, breaking a record that had stood for decades and had become something close to sacred in Japanese sport. He later played for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. I find the shape of that career genuinely instructive. It is tempting to treat MLB as the only real measuring stick and everything else as a consolation league, but Balentien's numbers suggest that fit, ballpark, pitching style and confidence can turn a marginal player into a historic one. He did not become a different hitter. He found the room where his swing made sense.

Name (English)

Wladimir Balentien

Name (Japanese)

ウラディミール・バレンティン

Reading

うらでぃみーる・ばれんてぃん

Born

July 2, 1984 (age 42)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Rat

Origin

Willemstad, Curaçao

Height

185 cm

Occupation

baseball player

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/therealcocobalentien/
• Xhttps://x.com/ElWlady4
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladimir%20Balentien
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A6%E3%83%A9%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%83%9F%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2318574

Tags

• baseball player

Last updated

2026-08-07

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.