On Monday, the Athletics selected two-way player Itsuki Takemoto with the 560th overall pick (19th round) in the 2025 MLB Draft. The Wakayama native made history as just the sixth Japanese player ever drafted by an MLB team. The most recent before him was Rikuu Nishida, taken in the 11th round by the White Sox in 2023. Before his time at the University of Hawaii, Takemoto helped Chiben Wakayama High School to a championship at the 2021 Summer Koshien tournament.
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Takemoto logged 104 2/3 innings over two NCAA seasons, posting a 5.16 ERA with 94 strikeouts and 40 walks. As a designated hitter, he slashed .263/.311/.343 with eight doubles and one home run in 151 plate appearances. Takemoto committed to serious weight training at Hawaii, boosting his average fastball velocity and transforming his physical conditioning. He also pitched for the Orleans Firebirds in the Cape Cod League in both 2024 and 2025, where he impressed with a 1.86 ERA across 38 2/3 innings.
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The 21-year-old will likely open his professional career on the mound full time. But regardless of whether Takemoto ultimately reaches the big leagues, his unconventional path has already become a blueprint for future prospects. In October 2023, Rintaro Sasaki made headlines by announcing he would forgo the NPB draft to play college baseball in the United States. But Takemoto made that same decision a year earlier.
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What drew greater attention to Sasaki’s case was his status as the clear-cut top prospect in the 2023 class, with many expecting him to be a highly contested pick under NPB’s nomination-and-lottery draft system. The slugger from Shohei Ohtani’s alma mater set the unofficial Japanese high school record for home runs and ultimately chose to attend Stanford, where he just completed his freshman season in 2025.
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By contrast, had Takemoto entered the 2022 draft, he was projected as more of a third-to-fifth-round talent. Still, Takemoto and Sasaki fall into the same bucket: Japanese prepsters going stateside to fast-track their path to MLB. Similarly, two-way talent Shotaro Morii bypassed the 2024 NPB draft and signed with the Athletics this January straight out of high school.
Though the Tazawa Rule—which barred amateurs who skipped the NPB draft to play overseas from signing with NPB teams for two to three years—has been officially revoked, uncertainty remains about how teams will treat those who take that route. While no longer formally restricted, players like Sasaki, Takemoto and Morii could face a soft blackball if they struggle in the U.S. and later try to return to NPB, adding risk to their decisions to immediately pursue baseball in America.
The conventional career path for many Japanese stars has been to play in NPB until at least age 25 before being posted to MLB. Recent examples include Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga, who secured major paydays for themselves and posting fees for their respective teams. However, the system has obvious flaws. Players posted before age 25—like Shohei Ohtani and Roki Sasaki—are limited to minor league deals due to MLB’s international signing rules.
Moreover, some NPB teams, like the SoftBank Hawks, refuse to post players altogether. Such was the case for Kodai Senga, who had to wait until earning international free agency after nine years of service to make the jump to MLB. All of these factors have led some MLB-aspiring amateurs to make the difficult decision to forgo NPB entirely. What becomes of the journeys taken by Sasaki, Takemoto, Morii and others like them will be watched with keen interest across both Japan and the U.S.
WBN Japan: https://worldbaseball.com/league/japan/
Photo: Fans gather to watch the first round of the MLB baseball draft Sunday, July, 13, 2025 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
