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The story
On the 9th, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association announced the 46 players set to take part in the tryout camp being held on the 17th at Vantelin Dome. Among players who were on NPB rosters this season, SoftBank and Hiroshima had the most entrants, with seven each. The list includes SoftBank’s Rikou Ogata, who played in this year’s Japan Series, and Hiroshima’s Masaya Yano. Opinions on the thread were split between the harsh reality that a strong tryout showing doesn’t necessarily lead to an actual contract, and the question of how much meaning the tryout system itself still has now that the ikusei (developmental-contract) system exists.
NTV, November 9, 2026, 17:10
On the 9th, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association announced the lineup of players taking part in the tryout to be held on the 17th at Vantelin Dome in Nagoya. The tryout gives players who’ve been released by their teams a chance to showcase themselves in search of a new place to play. It used to be run by NPB itself, but the players’ association has handled it since last year.
Among players who were on NPB rosters this season, SoftBank and Hiroshima had the most entrants. The list includes SoftBank’s Rikou Ogata, who also played in the Japan Series, and Hiroshima’s Masaya Yano. The entrants by position are as follows.
Source: news.ntv.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b8e055523634f2426d7ba60f909afd4e236678c1
Are they gonna give each of them like 2 outs to work with?
Apparently they changed it to this format specifically so it wouldn't turn into just that.
Tight gate.
Can't be helped — tryout results don't actually decide who gets signed.
Even homering in every single at-bat wouldn't be a sure thing.
His wife's too busy filming 'Kakuzuke Check' (the celebrity luxury-goods guessing TV segment).
Even if you go deep three at-bats in a row here, nobody's signing you.
If you actually went deep three at-bats in a row, I'd think at least an independent-league team would scoop you up.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Guys have monster games at the plate and still don't get picked up by anybody — happens all the time.
So then what's even the point of the tryout?
you still want to grab onto it if there's a chance of being saved.
Nobody's out there thinking that hard about it, lol.
This is more like a graceful send-off into retirement.
Wouldn't be surprising if someone leaned on something for a do-or-die moment like this.
Jumping straight back into NPB seems like a stretch.
He's a knuckleballer.
Guess he still hasn't given up on NPB.
It's probably just that demand for a proper retirement send-off is high, which is why NPB stopped running it — but doesn't it end up the same even with the players' association in charge?
Or maybe the association already paper-screens out the guys who are 'obviously not qualified to join' before it even starts.
I'm confident in my physical toughness — I don't even use the AC in winter.
Are you even a dues-paying member of the NPB players' association? No, you're not.
If it were a completely open tryout test, sure, you could — though you'd get cut in the first round, of course.
Like back when Rakuten was founded — local high school baseball guys went to the pro tryouts in droves just for kicks. Not a single one passed.
Guess that's one more reason not to aim for pro ballplayer — there just aren't many jobs in it.
If you don't make it in Japan, there's basically nowhere left to make a living doing the baseball you love.
Kids and parents know this too, which is why way fewer kids are even trying these days.
If baseball were more popular overseas, you could at least play in Asia, South America, or Europe, but…
The risk if baseball doesn't work out is just way too big.
Parents basically have to go all-in on their kid as if dedicating their whole life to it, or the kid won't make it pro — and a lot of these guys go to high schools that exempt them from studying so they can chase Koshien, then end up dropping out and becoming criminals.
Even in Korea, the world's third-biggest pro baseball league, the average salary is only around ¥20 million — cheaper than soccer, basketball, or even pro volleyball.
In Taiwan's league, the world's fourth-biggest, the average salary is ¥6 million, so you genuinely can't make real money there.
Mexico's even cheaper than that.
With baseball, if you don't make it in the US or Japan, that's basically the end of the road.
Doing well here doesn't lead to an NPB contract.
Oh, Lotte did have someone.
Hiroshima looks like it's running short on players though.
There was an article saying the BayStars (Yokohama) might take him, lol 😂
Misread it as 'signed' instead of 'entered.'
Background and key points of this discussion
The tryout camp shifted from being NPB-run to being organized by the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association starting last year, and in practice it’s known for often being more of a “showcase” for players whose fate has largely already been decided beforehand. What split the thread was, first, whether the tryout still has any real meaning now that the ikusei (developmental) contract system already exists as a safety net, and second, how to square the harsh reality that a good performance doesn’t directly translate into getting signed. The recurring references to a “graduation ceremony” or a “graceful send-off into retirement” reflect the fact that there have been real cases of players who put up monster-game numbers at past tryouts and still didn’t get picked up — underscoring that how well you do at the tryout doesn’t determine the outcome. A misconception some readers fall into is the idea that “doing well here means you’re back in the pros,” but in reality players are more often re-evaluated after first passing through an independent league, and as the article notes, an immediate return to NPB isn’t easy.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “This Year’s 46 Tryout Entrants Announced — Hiroshima and SoftBank Lead with 7 Players Each, Camp to Be Held on the 17th at Vantelin Dome.”
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