a cursory look into the last 10 years of the npb draft

what does a decade of drafting tell us?

The pick is in…

It’s pretty safe to say that drafting is one of several keys to success in running a baseball team. Teams need to be able to identify talent that they can develop and who can produce for them down the line. Drafting may be even more important in NPB, as blockbuster trades are a rarity and there are very few medium to high impact free agents every offseason. Aside from signing international players and the rule 5 draft, drafting players is the biggest way to bring in new talent.

So if drafting is so crucial to success, it stands to reason that teams put a conscious effort into the way they draft. So how do they draft? What positions do they tend to draft? What types of teams do they draft players from the most? High school? College? What about the first round?

We take a look at the past 10 years of the NPB draft try to find very preliminary answers to these kinds of questions. Don’t expect groundbreaking revelations, everything here is quite cursory.

Types of teams players are drafted from

We break players down into six types according to the type of team they were drafted from:

High schoolers (e.g. Roki Sasaki, Munetaka Murakami), college players (e.g. Masato Morishita, Natsuki Takeuchi), industrial league players (e.g. Kojiro Yoshimura, Ryuki Watarai), and indie leaguers are generally the most heard of. We throw in a category for amateur clubs (industrial leagues are grouped together with amateur clubs under the Japanese Amateur Baseball Association) and an et cetera “other” category for the remaining players.

One disclaimer is that the categorization of players may be a little inaccurate. We used a list of existing collegiate and amateur clubs and a handful of heuristics to sort the players into teams, so there may be some errors.

What kinds of teams are players drafted from?

Overall, teams tend to draft high schoolers, however in the first round they tend to draft college players.

In the above figure we have the distribution of drafted players from the last 10 years over the type of team they were drafted from. Moving forward we consider the following “splits”:

Right off the bat, there aren’t many players from amateur clubs. Only three such players have been drafted, all in the developmental draft, and none of them have had a single game on the top team. There are also only one “other” player who doesn’t fall into any of the main categories: Gosuke Katoh, who was drafted by the Nippon Ham-Fighters while a member of the New York Mets. Leave it to the Fighters to do something as unprecendented as this.

As we can see in the figure, in the entire draft, both the standard draft and the developmental one, high school players dominate, averaging a lead of 16.1% over the next prominent category, college players. However the story changes dramatically when we consider only first round picks, where it’s actually college players who have the lion’s share at 49.2% over high school players at 40.7%. On a side-note, no one goes for industrial players past the main draft.

Takeaway: High school players are popular in general, but college players are favored in the first round

How do the kinds of teams players are drafted from change per round?

In the main draft, college players go more in the earlier rounds then give way to high school talents. In the developmental draft, high schoolers lead in every round.

We plot the number of players drafted per round for each type of team in the standard and developmental drafts. We can see that college players are more frequently drafted not only in the first round of the main draft but in the second round too. It’s in the third round where high schoolers take over and dominate the draft in the middle rounds. Industrial players and indie leaguers are drafted at relatively unchanging amounts, with industrial leaguers consistently being drafted more and indie leaguers only being drafted starting the second round. As expected, as the draft goes on, less drafting occurs across the board.

Things change when we turn to the developmental draft, where high school players are the most frequently drafter type of of player for most of the rounds. Collegiate players and indie leaguers stay fairly toe-to-toe below.

Takeaway: In the standard draft, college players in the earlier rounds, high schoolers in the later ones. In the developmental draft, high school players all the way.

How do the kinds of teams players are drafted from change per year?

The number of high schoolers and college players in the main draft have become similar while high schoolers have increased in the developmental draft.

Over the entire draft, high school players tend to be drafted more than college players every year. There has only been one year when the number of high school draftees and college ones were separated by less than nine players. However, when we look at the standard draft, while high school players have been drafted more than college players by wider margins from 2016-2019, starting 2020 the number of high school draftees dip while the number of college draftees rise, leaving them neck-in-neck from 2020 to 2023. If high school and college players are being drafted at similar amounts in recent years, why do high schoolers still outnumber college players overall? In the development draft, starting 2018, there has been a general rise of drafted high schoolers, from 9 players in 2018 to 26 playres in 2023.

Focusing on the first round, contrary to expectation, college players are not consistently picked more in the first round than high school players. In five of the last years, college draftees have only outnumbered high school draftees by at most only one player. The reason why collegiate athletes tend to be drafted more overall is that in three of the last ten years, there have were eight college players drafted in the first round to only three to four high schoolers. High school players were drafted more than collegiate ones in the first round on two occasions, which were three years apart. The first was in 2016, where six high schoolers were drafted to five college players. However, in the second instance in 2019, seven high school players were drafted compared to only one collegiate player, with a record (in the 10 year sample) four industrial league players. The 2019 draft class was stacked with high school pitchers, including Yasunobu Okugawa, Hiroya Miyagi, and Roki Sasaki. The lone college athlete? Masato Morishita. Seems as if the Carp still picked well.

Takeaway: In recent years, high schoolers and college players have been drafted in similar numbers, while in the developmental draft the number of high school draft picks has been increasing.

Positions of drafted players

We break players down into the following positions:

We do not distinguish between types of infielders (1B, 2B, SS, 3B).

How are players drafted by position?

Pitchers are the most drafted position in all ways of looking at the draft.

Unsurprisingly, pitchers dominate in all splits of the draft. Especially in the first round, where they comprise 69.2% of draft picks.

Bottom line is, teams need lots of pitchers. Healthy fielders can play every day, but starting pitchers even when healthy can only pitch around once a week. Could it perhaps also be that Japan simply just has that much pitching talent? One would have to compare these distributions to those of other leagues to get an idea.

Takeaway: Pitchers, pitchers, pitchers.

How do the positions of drafted players change per round?

Pitchers tend to be the most drafted per round.

Last time we did a per round plot, we noticed that while high schoolers were generally the most frequently drafted, they were more drafted specifically in the middle to lower rounds. Could there be a similar pattern for pitchers? We don’t observe that, as the plot shows that pitchers are not only the most drafted position in the draft, but also tend to be the most drafted position per round.

Takeaway: Pitchers, still.

How do the positions of drafted players change per year?

There's been an uptick in the number of pitchers drafted in the developmental draft in recent years.

As previously established, year in and year out pitchers tend to be the most drafted, however in the developmental draft starting 2020 there was a further increase in the number of pitchers drafted each year. I’m not much of a NPB historian, so I can’t say why this happend. Perhaps there was a rule change or some sort, or a team got a new draft-happy GM? Honestly the answer’s probably out there, I’m just too lazy to search it up.

Pitchers dominating the first round is also consistent here, as there was only one year in the past decade where less than seven pitchers were drafted in the first round.

Takeaway: More developmental draft pitchers lately.

Teams against players drafted from them

How many teams have had a certain number of players drafted from them?

A majority of teams only produce only one draft pick.

We plot the number of teams who have produced a certain number of drafted players for a range of drafted players. Of the 472 teams, 260 of them (55.1%) have only produced one player drafted by an NPB team. Because the draftee-producing teams are primarily composed of those who have only put out one pick, moving forward, if might be more useful to visualize only teams which have produced more than a certain threshold of draft picks.

Takeaway: Most teams only produce one drafted player.

Who are the top teams at producing draftees?

Rather than rank the top x teams by number of players drafted from them, we’ll instead show all teams that produced at least x draft picks.

Mostly colleges, but a lots of Indigo Socks

Looking at all teams who have produced at least 10 draftees, we can see that NPB really, really loves the Tokushima Indigo Socks. They lead all teams with 25 draft picks produced, 7 more than the two teams tied for second (Meiji University and Asia University), which only lead the third highest-producing team by 3 players. Interstingly, the Tokushima Indigo Socks are the only independent league team. With the exception of two industrial league teams (JR East Tohoku and Toyota) and two high school teams (Osaka Toin and Hanasaki Tokuharu), the remaining nine teams are all colleges.

Less Indigo Socks, and still mainly colleges

Focusing on the standard draft, again with only teams with at least 10 draftees, we see that the Tokushima Indigo Socks have fallen to only 10 players. Instead we have Asia University and Meiji University tied at the top with 17 players each. Both leading industrial league teams are still there, but Osaka Toin is the only high school to produce at least 10 picks in the standard draft. Like with the overall draft, most of the teams here are universities, comprising 7 of the 11 teams that met the threshold.

Mainly indie league teams, especially the Indigo Socks.

Going to the developmental draft, and lowering our threshold to only five players, we see while high schoolers mainly comprise the developmental draft as established previously, it’s actually independent league teams that produce the most players per team. Furthermore, we can see here how the Tokushima Indigo Socks ended up dominating the overall draft: no other team has produced more than 7 draftees, while the Indigo Socks lead with 15.

Mostly Meiji University.

Lastly, looking only at the first round with a threshold of two players, Meiji University really pulls away from the pack. They have produced 8 first round draft picks, while the next best teams (Osaka Toin, Waseda University, and Toyo University) only have 4. Not every one of their draft picks have panned out to be super successful, but they did produce Masato Morishita, Sachiya Yamasaki, and Yuya Yanagi.

Osaka Toin’s also interesting to look at as they’re the only high school to have more than the threshold (the other high schools only meet it) with four draftees. The only one with a lot of hype at the moment is NPB #2 prospect Shion Mastsuo, but we’ve haven’t seen too much yet from Softbank’s 2023 first round pick Yugo Maeda either, so perhaps things will change down the road.

Another thing to note here is that both JR East Tohoko and Toyota, while producing several picks in the draft overall, have not produced multiple first round picks. Instead we have Toshiba (Kojiro Yoshimura’s having an excellent sophomore campaign), Osaka Gas (Koji Chikamoto was a big contributor to Hanshin’s championship last year), and Yamaha.

Takeaways: Colleges all around, Indigo Socks in the developmental draft, Meiji University in the first round.

Team Tendencies

How do NPB teams draft according to draftee team?

Teams tend to draft high schoolers, especially the Hawks at 63.2%. Only the Tigers have drafted without picking high school players the most at 34.3%, with the Lions splitting even between high school and collegiate draftees as 36.6% a piece.

Second place is usually college players, although the Orix Buffaloes have drafted the same number of college and industrial players.

This trend for the most part continues when focusing specifically on the standard draft, although more teams, namely the Eagles, Baystars, and Lions, draft more collegiate players than high school ones. Orix’s tendency to draft industiral players shines even more here, as they are the only team to have industrial players constitute the second larget subset of draftees.

Developmental draft picks are also mostly high schoolers, but it should be noted that some teams draft much fewer players in the developmental rounds. Notable exceptions include the Tigers (6 of 9 players being collegiate), Swallows (6 of 12 being indie leaguers), and Dragons (9 of 24 being indie leaguers).

First round distributions per team are mostly aligned with what we found earlier, which was that college players tend to be drafted the most often in the first round. That being said, the Hawks really buck the trend, here, having only drafted two college players in the first round in the past decade, one of which is actually current Fighters reliever Seigi Tanaka. Instead, they spent 7 of their last 10 first round selections on high school talent. The Marines also drafted more high school players than college players, while the Orix Buffaloes, Yakult Swallows, and Chunichi Dragons drafted the same number of high schoolers as collegiate athletes in a 10-year span.

Takeaways: Mostly the same patterns, but with some exceptions.

How do NPB teams draft according to position?

When looking according to position, the same general trend of pitcher’s first holds. Every team has spent more than 52% of their draft picks across both draft types on pitching, though this will come as a surprise to no one. The only other thing of note here is that the Tigers have drafted more outfielders than infielders compared to everyone else, though only marginally.

There…really isn’t much else to say about the standard draft per team that hasn’t already been discussed. It’s pitchers, infielders, then a toss-up between outfielders and catchers. There could be more going on here, but this is only a cursory look so I’ll leave that to any future investigation.

Like in previous findings, pitchers, while still usually the most dominantly drafted position in the developmental draft, takes a backseat, usually sitting under 50%. The Dragons though seem to be an outlier, with 70.8% of their 24 developmental draft players being pitchers.

Again, while teams take the foot off the gas a little for pitchers in the developmental draft, it’s pedal to the metal for first round picks. Nine of the twelve teams in NPB have at least seven pitchers taken in the first round. For the heck of it, let’s try to list down one notable (arguable) first round pitcher for as many teams as possible.

Team Notable Pitcher Taken in the First Round from 2014-2023
Orix Buffaloes Hiroya Miyagi
Chiba Lotte Marines Roki Sasaki
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks  
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles Takahisa Hayakawa
Saitama Seibu Lions Tatsuya Imai
Hokkaido Nippon Ham-Fighters Hiromi Itoh
Hanshin Tigers  
Hiroshima Toyo Carp Ryoji Kurabayashi
Yokohama DeNA Baystars Shota Imanaga
Yomiuri Giants Taisei
Tokyo Yakult Swallows Yasunobu Okugawa
Chunichi Dragons Hiroto Takahashi

The point is there’s a lot of high-impact pitching already known to teams by the first round. I mean, just look at this list. That’s restricting teams to one pitcher. Case in point, the Buffaloes have drafted Hiroya Miyagi, Shunpeita Yamashita, and Ryuhei Sotani all in the first round, not to mention Ren Mukunoki should he ever return to form.

Takeaways: Mostly the same patterns.

A cursory picture

While not particularly legible, thought it would be fun to shove a sunburst at the end of all this. Here you can see each teams draft picks broken down into position, then team type, then team. Although it doesn’t synthesize all the points we discussed, it does repeat the ideas that:

Again, none of these aren’t particularly surprising as I would assume most developable talent are among students, and that we really do need a lot of pitching.

Furthermore, as much of a cop out conclusion as it is, we haven’t been able to tie any possible differences in drafting strategy, if they’re even statistically significant in the first place, to the results we see on the field. For example, is there anything in Orix’s draft distributions that tie into their pitching lab?

It would be nice to gain deeper insights, but as stated before, this is merely a cursory look into the past decade of drafting.