Player development
Yes, there's a minor league in Japan called ni-gun. Every professional team has a minor league team, though there are no where near as many minor leagues in Japan as there are in MLB.
- Is there a draft?
Yes.
- Basically, how do the teams get their young players?
By the draft, basically.
The U.S. and Japan honor each other's drafts, therefore the do not touch players in the other country until players have gone through the draft system in the respective countries.
It was written earlier in this posting that each Japanese major Cenrtal or Pacific League team has one minor team in either the Eastern or Western League. In addition, there is a semi-pro Industrial League. Hideo Nomo is a graduate of the Industrial League.
All the Japanese ni-gun (farm) teams are named after their parent team, unforunately there isn't much or any information on it (NPB minor league baseball) in English anywhere.
- Yokohama BayStars' ni-gun team is called the Shonan SeaRex.
- Orix BlueWave's ni-gun team is called the Surpass.
Yokohama is trying to make their ni-gun a more independent entity, thus the different name. Orix sold the naming rights to their ni-gun team for extra income.
Information on the farm teams is hard to find in Japanese, let alone English. In general, the official sites for the teams (all in Japanese only) have a corner dedicated to the farm teams, but don't contain that much information.
This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.
Is there a draft?
Basically, how do the teams get their young players?