Card Of The Week February 11

One of the unique aspects of the NPB draft is that multiple teams can select the same player during the first round.  A lottery is held where the teams then pick from a set of envelopes to determine who gets the rights for the player.  I had written a while back about how the Swallows had ended up having to "settle" for their third choice in the 2010 draft - after losing the lottery for Yuki Saitoh to the Fighters first and then Takahiro Shiomi to Rakuten, they finally won the lottery against Orix for some guy named Tetsuto Yamada.  So essentially the Swallows kind of lucked into getting their most productive player of the 2010's.

So the funny thing about this is it basically happened again in the 2017 draft.  The big shiny object of that year's draft was high school sensation Kotaro Kiyomiya, who was taken by seven teams - the Marines, the Swallows, the Fighters, the Giants, the Eagles, the Tigers and the Hawks.  The Fighters won the lottery for his rights (somewhat appropriate as he's an alum of the same high school Saitoh made his name with) and it was back to the drawing board for the other six teams.  Three of those teams - the Eagles, the Swallows and the Giants - selected another high school slugger and this time the Swallows won the lottery for him.  So for the second time in seven years, the Swallows basically lucked into getting one of their best players - Munetaka Murakami.

Here's a card of Murakami from his rookie season of 2018 - it's from the "Hopeful Teen" insert set from the 2018 BBM Swallows set (#HT3).  The card is green foil and looks a lot better in person than it does in this scan: