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The story
Ren Rentaro Seki (14), a catcher from Kawasaki Mukaigaoka Junior High School whom the Yomiuri Giants picked 5th in the developmental draft, held a press conference on the 4th to deliver his draft acceptance greeting — drawing an unusual turnout for a junior-high player: 8 TV cameras and roughly 60 reporters. Seki took the stage alongside Tsuyoshi Omori, head of the Giants U15 Junior Youth team he belongs to, and lightened the mood early on by fumbling the time of day in his opening greeting. On 5ch, reactions split over this unprecedented career path — turning pro on a developmental contract while still attending a correspondence or full-time high school — between those calling it “a dream come true” and others dismissing it as “poaching a middle schooler early” or noting that “developmental slots get cut after a year.”
Giants Give 14-Year-Old Developmental 5th-Round Pick Ren Seki His Draft Greeting — Unusual Turnout of 8 TV Cameras, About 60 Reporters
Ren Seki (14), a catcher from Kawasaki Mukaigaoka Junior High School picked by the Giants in the 5th round of the developmental draft, received his draft greeting on the 4th, then held a press conference afterward at a hotel in Kawasaki City. He took the stage with Tsuyoshi Omori, head of the Giants U15 Junior Youth team he belongs to.
In his opening remarks at the evening press conference, he lightened the mood with an endearing slip-up: “Good morning, everyone… oh wait!”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
At least go to high school!
Sounds like he's going to a correspondence school.
Actually he gets to go to a full-time high school — he'll practice after school and on weekends.
It's the kind of slot where you get tossed aside after a year.
Knowing how it goes, it's probably just a library gift card (lol).
The Tigers just drafted a middle schooler returning from the US through the normal draft process. Seki's case is different — the Giants are keeping him in their junior academy while he stays in school under a developmental contract, so this is really about whether a J.League-style youth-team setup should be allowed in baseball.
This kind of thing might become more common from here on. If a middle schooler at the level of Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Kenta Maeda, or Shintaro Fujinami wants an NPB developmental contract while attending a full-time high school, there's no reason for a team to turn that down.
He's not even in high school, what are you even talking about.
Apparently he's just not interested in Koshien to begin with — heard he turned down offers from powerhouse schools.
He can't play there — he's on a youth team.
He gets to play baseball using Giants Town's facilities and coaches, so if he's not interested in high school baseball, this path works too. Besides, if he'd joined some powerhouse school's team, he might've ended up on the receiving end of jealous senpai bullying and harassment.
If he's top of his generation, he's probably got some vague idea of eventually heading to the US anyway. Signing a developmental contract still ties him down with roster rights and reservation rules, so I feel like all this does is move up the age at which kids start turning down NPB — just earlier, to the middle school years.
Maybe various teams will start doing this from next year on. Though I think it'll only work the way it did here — pulling from your own youth team.
Most middle schoolers' dream path is the usual one — go to a prestigious high school, shine at Koshien, and get picked first overall. And given that a regular roster contract is basically impossible for a middle schooler, with a developmental pick being the best you could hope for, I doubt you'll find a steady stream of middle schoolers willing to sign on to this.
The third-string team, right? The third string plays against college and corporate-league teams.
Neither the High School Baseball Federation nor NPB has any real power to restrict an amateur's career path — even the 'Tazawa Rule' got struck down by the Fair Trade Commission over antitrust concerns.
Well, it is the most popular sport in Japan.
Funny thing — this middle schooler went to the same elementary school as Morimoto. Both from Kawasaki, both out of Mukaigaoka Elementary. He's even matching Morimoto's path of turning pro at 15.
MLB's international amateur free agency opens up at age 16, so doing that would just hand these kids straight over to the majors.
Background and Points of Debate
Players picked in the developmental draft aren’t included in the 65-man active roster, earn reduced salaries, and are frequently released within a few years — the “a slot where you get tossed aside” comment on the thread reflects this system. What makes Ren Seki’s case unusual is that he signed while remaining with the Giants U15 Junior Youth, a development organization directly under the Giants umbrella — making it close to the first case of a team effectively locking down a middle schooler without him going through high school baseball. In soccer, there are already precedents of middle-school-age players signing pro contracts, such as Takayuki Morimoto and Takefusa Kubo, and Seki shares the detail of having attended the same elementary school as Morimoto — Kawasaki Municipal Mukaigaoka Elementary. In baseball, on the other hand, the “Tazawa Rule,” which restricted where rookie players could sign, was previously struck down by the Fair Trade Commission over antitrust concerns, and a trend of teams locking down middle schoolers early could spark similar debate. Where the thread split was over whether to see leaving the traditional high-school-baseball growth path behind as “a story with a dream” or as “corralling talent early.”</parameter>
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*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geino/Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] Giants Give Developmental 5th-Round Pick, 14-Year-Old Ren Seki, His Draft Greeting — Unusual Turnout of 8 TV Cameras, About 60 Reporters.”
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