Nippon Professional Baseball Amateur Draft

The Nippon Professional Baseball Amateur Draft is very similar to the MLB amateur draft. The teams in Nippon Pro Baseball use it as their primary method of picking up young talent. There are a few distinctions from the MLB draft. First off, players are picked not just from high schools and colleges but also from Japan's industrial league teams. While these players are picked less frequently, there are quite a few first-rounders from those leagues and some like Atsuya Furuta become superstars. Secondly, the first round is very different from the MLB draft. Each NPB team simultaneously lists their top choice - if the player is picked by only one team, they win the rights to him, but if they are picked by multiple teams then a lottery is held for their rights. Whoever loses those lotteries then does a redraft from the remaining players; there can again be ties that need to be resolved. Once all the redrafts (sometimes several) are done and each team has secured their top choice, then the draft proceeds more like the MLB draft, with teams going in order and picking players. For instance, in the 2013 NPB draft, only the Seibu Lions took Tomoya Mori with their first pick so they got him, whereas five clubs chose Yuki Matsui and three took Daichi Osera, with the draft going four rounds before the Nippon Ham Fighters got Ryo Watanabe after losing lotteries for Matsui, Yuta Kakita (who never made it to NPB) and Yuta Iwasada.