Japanese Baseball Draft
 

Can someone explain to me the Japanese Baseball Draft?

There seems to be no merit for having a losing season and it seems that the strongest teams has an equal chance of getting the best players in the draft. Seems really unfair.

Round 1:
All teams provide a name of one player. If only one team names the player, then the team gets it. If more than one team name the player, then a team will be chosen by lottery. Teams lost on the lottery can name another player. The system is repeated till all teams get one player.

Round 2:
Player is chosen one team at a time. The team ranked bottom of the ranking get to choose first, then go up the list. Each team gets one player.
This year's order is Rakuten-Hanshin-Lotte-Chunichi-Orix-Yokohama-Nippon Ham-Giants-SoftBanks-Yakult-Seibu-Hiroshima.

Round 3:
Player is chosen one team at a time. The team ranked at the top choose first and go down the list. Each team gets one player. Reverse order of Round 2.

Round 4:
Round 2 and Round 3 are repeated till all players in the draft were chosen, or 120 players were chosen.

If there are more than 120 players in the draft, then there will be players who will not be chosen.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but this is better than what we have in the USA.
The tankathon in the NBA is ridiculous, and unfortunately I too find myself joining the madness. Every year I'm rooting for my team to lose in the second half of the season.

So there is no inherit positive to a bad year..

You still need to rely on lady luck and it means that sometimes, the best teams (Hiroshima) can get the player they want in the first round.

While tankathon IS ridiculous, having loyal fans endure a bad season to get kicked in the head again by the draft seems unfair.

Carp VS Hawks, first game in the series ends in a twelve inning TIE!!!!!

Now what? Winner is first team to win 4 games, does that mean that there is a potential of playing 8 games????

Beats having to go eighteen innings

Yea, but Red Sox won the World Series! Good to be at Boston, go Bean Town! Oh, this Japan forum, isn't it? 😛

yep.

From wikipedia:

Not sure about that.

18 innings was just plain awesome!!! It was exciting and there was an actual victor after that exhaustive effort by all.

I guess Softbank announced all the players they're waiving the day after they won the championship.
You'd think they could at least wait a few days.

The 1997 Marlins say hello.

Thanks for the information, i had the same question a few weeks back