2014 NPB Draft

NPB held their draft today and as usual, Deanna and Gen each live blogged it - Deanna pulling an all-nighter to do so as the draft started at 1 AM California time.  Deanna also did a photo-post previewing the players eligible for the draft.  Gen has a list of picks broken down for each team in the Central and Pacific leagues.

As usual there were a handful of guys from the Tokyo Big Six who got drafted.  Here's my annual list of guys drafted today that already have baseball cards from BBM's Tokyo Big Six sets.

All sets are from BBM.  I'm only listing regular cards as I don't have a complete list of the insert cards.

Akihiro Hakumura, Keio (Fighters #6)

2013 Tokyo Big Six Version #16 (Shown)

Tomoya Mikami, Hosei by way of JX-ENEOS (Baystars #4)

2009 Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #02 (Shown)
2011 Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #13
2011 Tokyo Big Six Autumn Version #13

Naomichi Nishiura, Hosei (Swallows #2)

2013 Tokyo Big Six #04 (Shown)

Hiromi Oka, Meiji (Fighters #3)

2012 Tokyo Big Six #01 (Shown)
2013 Tokyo Big Six #20

 If it wasn't obvious from how I put it, Mikami is a former Hosei player who's been playing for JX-ENEOS in the industrial leagues the last year or so.  I think I've missed some players like him in previous years but now that I have my cards in a real database I should be able to find these guys as well.

UPDATE - One more card I forgot about.  Well, not really a card, more a "card".  Sports Card Magazine #95 last fall had  a two page spread featuring "fictional cards" - front and backs of four cards that only existed on these pages.  There were three female athletes - Kasumi Ishikawa (table tennis), Saori Kimura (volleyball) and Yoko Tanaka (soccer) as well as Toko Gakuen High School pitcher Yuki Matsui, who had struck out a record 22 batters in a game during the 2012 Koshien tournament.  Matsui was taken by the Eagles in the first round: