Lions win rights to Hiruma in uncontested 2022 draft

 

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The 2022 NPB Draft took place on  Thursday night with more than 100 players selected. 

A total of nine teams including the Saitama Seibu Lions announced their first round draft nomination before the event even took place. All players were not matching, only a matter of wondering what the Chiba Lotte Marines, Hanshin Tigers and Yokohama DeNA Baystars would do as they stayed secretive.

In the end, the Lions ended up with outfielder Takuya Hiruma of Waseda University. 

Hiruma is capable of helping the Lions sooner than later with decent base running speed and power in his bat. Some articles have even compared him to Masataka Yoshida. 

He was also a high school teammate of current Lions pitcher Yutaro Watanabe when at Urawa Gakuin and was part of a junior Lions team. By the time it was his senior year in college, he was the team's cleanup hitter. 

With the Lions needing help in the outfield, they're hoping Hiruma can be a short term fix. Many outfielders we're rotational and couldn't keep an every day stronghold on their position. He'll likely slot into Centerfield or right field.

Here are all the Lions draft picks from 2022:

1. OF Takuya Hiruma, Waseda University (Tokyo)

2. OF Yuta Furukawa, Saiki Kakujo High School (Oita)

3. C Kaito Noda, Kyushu Kokusai High School (Fukuoka)

4. P Minato Aoyama, Asia University (Tokyo)

5. P Haruto Yamada, Ohmi High School (Shiga) 

6. IF Ryosuke Kodama, Osaka Gas (Osaka)

i1. P Kazuki Nomura, Ishikawa Million Stars (Ishikawa)

i2. OF Montell Higuma, Tokushima Indigo Socks (Tokushima)

i3. P Daiki Miura, Chukyo University (Aichi)

i4. OF Ryosuke Koresawa, Hosei University (Tokyo)

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Here are some early polls from the Japanese Twitter Community about Hiruma and the draft class as a whole:

ライオンズの今年のドラフト、どう評価しますか？

拡散してください @64Uni_Lions @Cape_Lions @nerimamo #ライオンズドラフト2022 #seibulions #埼玉西武ライオンズ

— Graveyard Baseball (@GraveyardBall) October 20, 2022

蛭間外野手はどう思いますか？

What do you think of Hiruma?#蛭間拓哉 #seibuIions#埼玉西武ライオンズ
拡散してください @64Uni_Lions @Cape_Lions @nerimamo

— Graveyard Baseball (@GraveyardBall) October 20, 2022

We will have further research and details on the entire Lions draft in a future post. 

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