Nationals Draft Japanese National
In addition to quietly selecting some guy named Strasburg in this week’s MLB draft, the Nationals took Japan native Naoya Washiya in the 14th round, out of a junior college in the Palm Springs, California area.
Probably the most interesting thing in the Nikkan Sports story on him is that he was a high school teammate of current Rakuten ace Masahiro Tanaka. Washington selected Washiya in the 42nd round of last year’s draft as well, but he elected to stay in school. This time around he’s decided to sign, rather than continuing on to a four-year school as he had originally planned.
Washiya is a speedy outfielder and will start his pro career in either short-season or single-A ball.
PS. Please excuse the title of this post.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=60e8e5c6-5193-4e49-ab58-857a9237fbc9)
13/06/2009 at 12:14 am Permalink
It looks the Eagles have signed outfielder Todd Linden, who was playing for AAA Scranton Wilkes Barre.
13/06/2009 at 12:17 am Permalink
Another question does this guy get blacklisted by the NPB for drafting with a MLB team or since he went to a JUCO school, he’s scotch free and a NPB team would have to draft him a la Mac Suzuki?
13/06/2009 at 12:45 am Permalink
Thanks for the tip about Linden. He’s always seemed like a guy who would wind up in Japan to me.
As for Washiya, I assume he would be subject to the NPB draft if he choose to go that route. This is exactly the reason why I think the Tazawa rule will break down at some point.
13/06/2009 at 7:11 am Permalink
I don’t think Washiya is in the same category since he didn’t turn down the NPB draft, did he? I thought he failed to get into whatever university he wanted to go to (Tsukuba? I’m not sure) and went to the US mostly as a way to spend a ronin year and get better at baseball as well.
13/06/2009 at 7:37 am Permalink
Yeah, that’s what the Nikkan Sports article says. It doesn’t mention what school he wanted to go to in Japan though.
All of the Japanese players returning from playing abroad (Mac Suzuki, Kazuhito Tadano, Tetsuya Yamaguchi, et al) have been subject to the draft. All of the guys I listed were undrafted in NPB for misc reasons before going abroad. The thing I don’t get about the Tazawa rule is how NPB teams could basically lock these types of guys out after not drafting them. Of course, maybe they wouldn’t apply the rule to guys in this situation.
13/06/2009 at 8:58 am Permalink
Yeah, I think the Tazawa rule only applies to top prospects who refuse to be drafted by NPB teams. Though the line can be vague (ah, Japan).