NPB: Rintaro Sasaki Drafted by Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in Shock Move

The 2025 Nippon Professional Baseball Draft took place on Thursday night in Tokyo, as many of Japan’s top amateur talents learned where they will begin the next chapter of their careers.

With NPB’s unique nomination-and-lottery format, the spotlight moments came when the Hanshin Tigers landed Soka University slugger Masahiro Tateishi and the Chiba Lotte Marines won the drawing for high school right-hander Genki Ishigaki.

But the biggest surprise of the night came when a name few expected to hear was called not once, but twice: that of Rintaro Sasaki.

The Stanford University first baseman famously bypassed the 2023 NPB Draft despite being one of the nation’s top prospects at Hanamaki Higashi High School, the alma mater of Shohei Ohtani. His decision made him a trailblazer, paving the way for others, like Shotaro Morii, to follow a similar path to the United States. Though Sasaki was not the first to make such a move, he remains the most highly touted Japanese prospect ever to forgo playing in NPB, having set the unofficial Japanese high school record for home runs.

The 6-foot, 270-pound slugger hit seven home runs with a .790 OPS in his first season at Stanford and also gained experience in the MLB Draft League and Cape Cod League, though his performances there were not particularly strong. Nonetheless, expectations are still sky-high for the 20-year-old, who was named Preseason National Freshman of the Year by Baseball America in January and has drawn comparisons to power hitters like Bryce Harper and Prince Fielder.

Top prospects in the past, such as Ohtani and Kotaro Kiyomiya, had contemplated similar moves to Sasaki, but the Tazawa Rule discouraged them by penalizing players who bypassed the NPB Draft, making them ineligible to return to Japan for several years, depending on whether they were high school or college players. However, that rule was abolished in 2020, and NPB further amended its regulations this summer to allow Japanese players enrolled at overseas colleges to be eligible for selection in the draft. There were rumors that the Orix Buffaloes attempted to select Sasaki in the 2024 Draft, but were prevented from doing so because he was not yet considered eligible under the previous rules.

Sasaki did not formally declare himself eligible for the Draft this year either, but was nonetheless nominated in the first round by both the Yokohama DeNA BayStars and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, to the surprise of many in the audience. SoftBank ultimately won the lottery for Sasaki’s negotiation rights, giving them the opportunity to sign him as early as next summer, following the conclusion of the NCAA season.

However, Sasaki has expressed aspirations to play Major League Baseball, and his move to Stanford was widely presumed to be a strategic step toward fast-tracking a path to MLB. He is under no obligation to sign with SoftBank and remains eligible for the 2026 MLB Draft, but now holds the option to return to Japan should he reconsider or fall short of being a top draft pick in the eyes of MLB organizations.

It’s also worth noting that SoftBank enforces a strict anti-posting policy, meaning a jump from the Hawks to MLB would likely require Sasaki to complete nine full years of NPB service time to earn international free agency, should he join the team. The NPB Draft does not include compensation picks, so the Hawks will have effectively forfeited their first-round selection if Sasaki ultimately decides not to sign, making this gambit a potentially costly one.

The deadline for contract negotiations between the two sides is July 2026.

Photo: Stanford’s Rintaro Sasaki hits a single against Wake Forest during the twelfth inning of an NCAA college baseball game Friday, April 25, 2025, in Stanford, Calif. (AP Photo/Eakin Howard)