Overview
The NPB Draft, held annually in October, is one of the league's biggest events where 12 teams select amateur players. Introduced in 1965 to promote competitive balance, the first-round uses a bidding system with a lottery for overlapping selections-the lottery results generate enormous public attention each year. From the second round onward, a waiver system based on previous season standings is used. In the 1968 draft, Yutaka Enatsu was selected first overall by Hanshin, and his subsequent career is cited as a success story of the system. In 2006, four teams (Rakuten, Yokohama, Orix, and Nippon-Ham) competed for Masahiro Tanaka, with Rakuten winning negotiation rights. High school phenoms tend to attract the most competition-in 2018, four teams including Chunichi vied for Akira Neo. A split draft separating high school and college/corporate players was briefly introduced in 2005 but proved unpopular and reverted to a unified format in 2008. A development draft runs in parallel for selecting players outside the active roster limit. The development system's importance has grown significantly, with players like Kodai Senga emerging from development contracts to become ace-caliber pitchers.