Nippon Professional Baseball

The achievements made Oda dream even higher.

When I was little, I dreamed of NPB and wanted to play there, he said.

But after being able to perform on a great stage with Yokohama High School, I began to feel that I want to test myself and succeed on an even higher stage.

Japanese high school players seeking to directly join a major league baseball team can sign as an international amateur free agent.

I

get the sense they're going to have to get in line then because the Cubs had a breakout player who originated from NPB this year, right? And

Murakami and the White

Sox.

It was a cut below MLB.

I think they're starting to get a newfound respect for it, which is going to create a really interesting dynamic because there's an element of baseball players in Japan now realizing, oh, there's a great chance that I can be extremely successful and make a shit ton of money in America because it turns out the talent level is so much closer than anyone realized.

And if that happens, I know that there's a posting process where NPB controls the rights to players being posted.

And they've been a little generous recently with posting some players early or on request.

I'll lay out my full MLB expansion and realignment plan, including division alignments and scheduling, and then...

We'll finish by looking at what Major League Baseball might be able to learn from Japan's NPB and South Korea's KBO.

Been looking into those leagues a lot.

They might be the best version of baseball available to watch next year.

The pace is better.

I enjoy it.

But when you watch NPB or KBO games, the first thing you notice isn't the roles.

It's the people.

You look at Kosuke Okamoto, even a veteran who signed around the age of 30 with the Blue Jays, 30 home run season, north of 90 RBIs.

Like, again, two guys that were big sluggers for their respective clubs while having great track record with the NPB.

Sato is right in the conversation with both of them when it comes to great track record with NPB, and has been more impressive than either of those players, depending on the year.

And this season especially, he had another dominant year.

Back-to-back years now with Sato, is essentially 40 home runs and 100 RBIs, and he's batted from 277 pretty consistently throughout his career, 260 to high 270s, to this season turning up a notch, a 306 average, 383 on base, 609 slug.

He batted roughly 100% better than the average hitter in the NPB, for context.

That's [laughs] really good.

A Triple Crown type player where he's essentially their MVP there that we see in the NPB, and he's found the power in his swing now.

It seems like the exact kind of, like, outfield power bat they need.

And they're als- they're also, like, chasing this Japanese pitcher and this hitter, so I'm like, "Okay, we're gonna become the AL version of the Dodgers," where, like, that apparently is what they're, they wanna do, is they wanna, like, go hard on the NPB, which, 'cause Okamoto, who they brought in this past season, was, like, the, the big bright spot of the season.

Like, he was fucking great in his first year in MLB.

So-

Um-

'Cause-

... uh, it, it, the Cubs had a breakout player who originated from NPB this year, right? Um-

In Murakami and the White Sox.

Yeah, Arizona Fall League is big time.

Uh, NPB or KBO?

Ooh, wow.

KBO has been really nice to me, but I, I love the NPB.

Yeah.

They, that baseball's so good.

Do you feel that that's the case with the KBO? Yeah.

Yeah, the KBO, NPB, and the CPBO, which is Taiwan's, they all have very similar approaches.

They're not the same.

I think to a North American baseball fan, the first time it kind of feels the same.

Like, I am just a little Lowe's home improvement potted plant sitting on the desk.

I just am by myself, discreetly in my own little pot.

But in the NPB, I think of the aspen tree, this one giant organism where every... ostensibly individual tree is actually a node of this single organism, all breathing and living and moving together in one motion.

It almost feels like what you're saying is, if I walk through the gates of the stadium into an NPB game, I'm almost I'm part of this thing.