I've been following Japanese baseball for about 24 years now and one of the topics I've see bantered around every so often is "when is NPB going to expand?" This is probably the second most discussed topic, behind "when are we going to get a real World Series between the MLB and NPB champions?" (and I would echo Jim Allen's answer to that - it'll happen as soon as MLB figures out how to make a buck out of it).
Funny thing though - NPB actually has already expanded for this season but you may not have noticed. That's because the expansion happened at the farm team level, not at the top level.
Let me take a minute to explain the NPB farm system. Unlike MLB teams which each have four farm teams, NPB teams only have one farm team. Each farm team plays in one of two leagues - the Eastern League and the Western League. The Eastern League includes the farm teams for the Marines, Fighters, Lions, Eagles, Swallows, Baystars and Giants while the Western League includes the farm teams for the Dragons, Hawks, Tigers, Carp and Buffaloes. Each farm team plays relatively close to their parent club with the exception of the Fighters who play in Kamagaya, Chiba. (The Fighters had heavily invested in their facility in Kamagaya in the late 90's while they were still playing in Tokyo so they kept the team there. Plus the Eastern League's travel expenses would have skyrocketed with having to have the teams travel to Sapporo - most of the teams are in Kanto and are a relatively short train or bus ride apart).
Now if you're paying attention to the make up of the two leagues, you can see there's a problem - each league has an odd number of teams. The Eastern League has seven and the Western League has five. The problem, of course, with a league with an odd number of teams is that all the teams can't play at the same time - one team has to be idle.
The two leagues used to each have six teams until 2004. The Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes were merged into the Orix BlueWave and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles were added to replace them. Kintetsu's farm team had been in the Western League but it made more geographical sense for Rakuten's farm team to be in the Eastern League so the leagues have had an odd number of teams ever since.
Until this season, that is. NPB has "expanded" the two farm team leagues by adding what are essentially independent teams to each league. The Eastern League has added the Niigata Albirex, a team that has been playing in the independent Baseball Challenge (BC) league since 2007 while the Western League has added a brand new team - the Hayate Ventures - which will play in Shizuoka.
It's kind of a weird situation where neither team really gets any benefit from playing in the "affliated" minors as opposed to the indy ones. They're not allowed to participate in the NPB draft so they're really not going to able to develop any talent that they could sell off to NPB teams. They're basically in the same situation that all the other indy minor league teams are in - they can sign former NPB players and sell those players to NPB organizations but any draft eligible players they sign will still have to go through the draft to join an NPB team. Really the only benefit they're getting is being in a league with more visibility and better players. Of course, the "better players' part of that equation means both teams will probably be the doormats of their respective leagues (and two weeks into the season that started on March 15th, that is indeed the case - Niigata is 2-7-1 and Hayate is 1-10-1, good enough for dead last in both leagues).
As far as I know, there's no intent that these team should someday become full-fledged NPB teams. In fact, if I remember correctly when the teams were announced, it was expressly said that they would not ever be top-level teams. I do think it's interesting that the locations of the two teams - Niigata and Shizuoka - are frequently mentioned as places that NPB could add top level expansion teams. It's probably just a coincidence though.
Personally I think NPB should have basically run these two teams as co-op teams like affiliated minors in the US used to have before they got a little more streamlined back in the 1990's. The roster for each team could have been made up of guys on the 70 man rosters for the other teams in their league that their parent team wanted a chance to get some more playing time. I've always assumed that with 35-40 players on the farm team roster that it can be difficult for some players to get playing time although I could be wrong about that.
Like I mentioned, one of the pools of players available to these two teams is former NPB players and a glance at their rosters show that they've been dipping into that pool quite a bit. I thought I'd do a post showing cards of the ex-NPB players on each roster as well as each team's manager. First up is Niigata, which is managed by former Swallow, Fighter and Tiger Hideki Hashigami:
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| 1994 BBM Late Series #594 |
Keisuke Kobayashi, Buffaloes 2017-20, Tigers 2020-23:
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| 2023 BBM Tigers #T27 |
Tomoya Mikami, Baystars (2014-22), Giants (2023):
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| 2021 BBM Baystars #DB18 |
Shota Nakayama, Swallows (2019-22):
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| 2022 BBM Swallows #S59 |
Keita Sonobe, Buffaloes ikusei (2022-23):
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| 2022 BBM Rookie Edition #066 |
Shun Takayama, Tigers (2016-23):
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| 2022 BBM Tigers #T61 |
Shunta Tanaka, Giants (2018-20), Baystars (2021-23):
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| 2021 BBM 1st Version #258 |
Kazuki Yabuta, Carp (2015-23):
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| 2021 Epoch Carp Rookies & Stars #09 |
Daikan Yoh, Fighters (2006-16), Giants (2017-21):
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| 2021 Epoch NPB #241 |
Kazumasa Yoshida, Buffaloes (2014-21):
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| 2021 BBM Buffaloes #B05 |
It's kind of an interesting roster. There's three former first round picks (Takayama, Yoh and Yoshida). Yoh has played on the Taiwan National Team for the 2006 and 2013 World Baseball Classics and the 2015 Premier 12 and
has spent the past two seasons playing indy ball in the US. Yabuta played on the Samurai Japan team that won the 2017 Asian Professional Baseball Championship. This is Yoshida's third season with Niigata.
Hayate is managed by former Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher Motoyuki Akahori:
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| 2001 BBM #257 |
Here's Hayate's former NPB players:
Yoshiaki Fujioka, Hawks (2006-13), Fighters (2014-16), Baystars (2016-20):
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| 2020 BBM Baystars #DB32 |
Shuhei Fukuda, Hawks (2007-19), Marines (2020-23):
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| 2023 BBM Marines #M60 |
Sota Ikeya, Baystars 2021-23:
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| 2023 BBM Baystars #DB29 |
Shoma Itani, Hawks ikusei (2021-23):
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| 2021 BBM Rookie Edition #011 |
Toshihiko Kuramoto, Baystars (2015-22):
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| 2019 Baystars Team Set #5 |
Ryosuke Nishikawa, Marines (2021-23):
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| 2021 Epoch Pacific League Rookies #10 |
Yusei Nishihama, Buffaloes ikusei (2023):
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| 2023 BBM Rookie Edition #006 |
Koki Orishita, Giants ikusei (2018-20):
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| 2018 BBM Rookie Edition #097 |
Kenjiro Tanaka, Baystars (2008-23):
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| 2023 Epoch NPB #265 |
Yuito Tanigawa, Marines ikusei (2021-23):
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| 2021 BBM Rookie Edition #019 |
Hayate's roster includes two first round picks (Fukuda and Tanaka) as well as two first picks from the ikusei portion of the draft (Nishihama and Tanigawa).
I discovered that I had another card of a player on Hayate's roster - one who had never played in NPB. Pitcher Rintaro Hirama has spent most of the past four seasons with the Kochi Fighting Dogs of the Shikoku Island League (other than some time in 2022 that he spent in the Mexican League). Since I have most of the 2020 Kochi team set, I have a card of Hirama:
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| 2020 Kochi Team Set #04 |
Speaking of team sets, it's not yet known if there will be any baseball cards for either team. As fas as I have been able to tell, Niigata has never had any baseball cards (other than an oddball card for manager Naoyuki "Gyaos" Naito that was a giveaway at a BBM event a few years back). Since they're new, there's no way to predict whether Hayate will publish a team set - although I'm surprised that their website doesn't have a store yet. I'm hoping to see Hayate play when I'm in Japan in May - I've wanted to see a game in Shizuoka since I stopped by the stadium in 2019 - so maybe I'll find out for myself.
