win both games. They would make the Japan Series the following year, but just barely, after being .001 winning percentage higher than the second place Orix Braves, but lost to the Giants in the first reverse sweep since the 1958 Japan Series. American outfielder Ralph Bryant starred for the Buffaloes from 1988-1995, in the process becoming one of the best left-handed power hitters in Japanese baseball history. Bryant had his best season in , where his 49 home runs led the Buffaloes to their third Pacific League championship. He won the season MVP award that year, and also tied Sadaharu Oh's career record for hitting three home runs in a game five 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. To combat this, MLB and NPB agreed to make the posting system, which allowed players in NPB to "post" and allowed them to move to MLB. Without Nomo, the Buffaloes struggled in pitching, with a 4.16 ERA and 4.70 FIP after Nomo's departure. In 2000, the Buffaloes signed Mexican pitcher Narciso Elvira. While he had terrible pitching, he was noted for being the only Mexican player in NPB history as of 2022 to throw a no-hitter, and only allowing 4 walks. He was cut 6 games into the Buffaloes' 2001 Pacific League championship season, and then signed with the Samsung Lions of the KBO League and won the 2002 Korean Series with them. Tuffy Rhodes played for the Buffaloes 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 single season home run record, set in . For the rest of the season, opposing pitchers intentionally walked Rhodes to prevent him from breaking Oh's record. Rhodes also played in tandem with Norihiro Nakamura, who also hit 46 home runs that same season. Together, they became a deadly hitting tandem, and the Buffaloes had one of the most dominant offenses in the league. Despite the efforts of Rhodes and Nakamura, the Buffaloes could still not