Mitsuo Yoshikawa didn't just come out of nowhere this season. That would be putting it too simply. Try nowhere taken to a whole new obscure level, then go even further. Somewhere on the outskirts of that is where you'd find Yoshikawa.
Even that feels like somewhat of an understatement. How else to describe the journey of a pitcher who began 2012 with the most recent of his six career victories having come in 2008, putting together a 14-win season en route to winning the Pacific League MVP award?
"I'd say it was because I changed my way of thinking about things," the Hokkaido Nippon Ham pitcher said of his sudden rise to prominence on Wednesday, "and the manager always sent me to the mound with confidence.