2016 NPB Draft

This year's NPB draft was held on Thursday - I guess that officially it is called the 2015 draft but it will be identified as the 2016 draft on the back of BBM's baseball cards so I'm calling it that.  As has been custom the last few years both Deanna of Marinerds and Gen of YakyuBaka live blogged the draft.  YakyuBaka also has the list of picks broken down for each team in the Central and Pacific leagues.

I'm a couple days late with my small part of the annual tradition - identifying which of the newly drafted players already have baseball cards in one of BBM's sets for the Tokyo Big Six collegiate baseball league.  Sadly BBM stopped doing sets for the league in 2013 so this may be the last of my annual draft posts.

In addition to the BBM Tokyo Big Six sets, some of this year's drafted players appeared in Panini's autographed insert set for the 2013 Japanese Collegiate National Team that was associated with the USA Baseball box set that was released in late 2013.  I only have a few of the cards and I still have not figured out the complete checklist but I've listed what I know.

Eigoro Mogi, Waseda (Eagles #3)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #11

Koji Ohshiro, Rikkio (Buffaloes #3)

2013 Panini Japanese Collegiate National Team #4

Seishiro Sakamoto, Meiji (Tigers #2)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #23
2013 Panini Japanese Collegiate National Team (unknown card number)

Ryota Sekiya, Meiji by way of JR Higashinihon (Marines #2)

2013 Panini Japanese Collegiate National Team #18

Shun Takayama, Meiji (Tigers #1)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #22

Kenta Uehara, Meiji (Fighters #1)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #21

Toshitake Yokoo, Keio (Fighters #6)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #15

Masataka Yoshida, Aoyama Gakuin Univ (Buffaloes #1)

2013 Panini Japanese Collegiate National Team #23


It is possible that there are ex-Tokyo Big Six players who were drafted out of the independent or industrial leagues (like Sekiya) who appear in the BBM collegiate sets but I haven't identified anyone else.  There are players who were directly drafted out of the Tokyo Big Six schools who did not appear in any of the BBM sets - I didn't list any of those guys here.

UPDATE - Deanna left a comment (see below) listing not only what former Tokyo Big Six players were drafted out of the industrial leagues last week but also where to look for that information in the future.  Here's the other two players:

Toshiki Abe, Meiji by way of Honda (Dragons #5)

2009 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #25 (pictured)
2011 BBM Tokyo Big Six Spring Version #21

Takuya Kinoshita, Hosei by way of Toyota (Dragons #3)

2013 BBM Tokyo Big Six #05

Thanks for the information Deanna!