2026 NPB Draft

The 2026 NPB draft was held today and, as usual, I was interested in seeing which of the drafted players already had baseball cards.  I used my friend Deanna's annual draft post as a reference and reviewed all the corporate league players to see who had appeared in any of the JABA sets.  Here's who I found:

Kanta Aiba, Yamaha, Tigers 4th

2024 JABA #24JP072

2026 JABA #26JABA048

2021 JABA #21JP048

2022 JABA #22JP046

2024 JABA #24JP027

2024 JABA #24JP072

2025 JABA #25JABA036

2025 JABA #26JABA048

Ryosuke Fujisawa, Tokyo Gas, Swallows 1st

2026 JABA #26JABA095

2026 JABA #26JABA095

Shin Higuchi, Oji (Prince), Eagles 3rd

2026 JABA #26JABA027

2026 JABA #26JABA027

Masato Shibaski, Oji (Prince), Dragons 2nd

2026 JABA #26JABA086

2026 JABA #26JABA086

Kanta Aiba is a kind of interesting story.  He joined Yamaha in 2021 after graduating from high school.  After the requisite three years that a former high school player who joined a corporate league team instead of declaring for the NPB draft has to wait, he registered for the draft in 2023 but was not selected.  Undeterred, he registered for the draft again in 2024 but again was not selected.  The situation repeated in 2025.  Finally, after four tries, the Tigers called his name this year.  He is not the only player to have six cards in the JABA sets (each player had two cards in the 2024 set) but he's the first one to be drafted.  It would not surprise me if he actually had seven JABA cards but since I've never been able to assemble a checklist for the 2023 set, I don't know if he does.

I'll make my usual comment that it's possible (and actually likely) that some of the indy league players who were drafted today had cards in their team's team sets but it's difficult to track down which teams did sets and who was in them.