Yoshinobu Yamamoto packed two gloves for high school, never reached Koshien and went in the fourth round

Yoshinobu Yamamoto grew up in Bizen, Okayama, and played mostly second base for his junior high club team, pitching now and then. Writer Noriko Yonemushi reported in Number in 2021 that when he left for Miyakonojo High School in Miyazaki, he took two gloves: an infielder's and a pitcher's. Ippei Suzuki, the local sporting goods shop owner whose brand they carried, told her he liked the boy's control but never imagined a pro career.

The change came quickly. Number reported that Yamamoto became a full-time pitcher in the autumn of his first year and went from 135 km/h as a first-year to 151 km/h, about 94 mph, by the summer of his second year. Asked why, he credited others: "I happened to be blessed with the people around me." Masahiko Abe, writing in web Sportiva in 2019, put the high school mark more loosely at around 150, and recalled seeing him at a spring prefectural tournament and thinking how small he looked.

Abe's most vivid detail is about the scouts. He wrote that nearly all those covering Kyushu put Yamamoto among their top three in the region, and that after one rainout he saw a scout still standing at the park under an umbrella. It is Abe's own account and we did not find it elsewhere. Yamamoto's school never reached Koshien during his time there, so the national audience did not see him.

In the 2016 draft the high school attention went to pitchers who had been on that stage, among them Tatsuya Imai, Shoma Fujihira and Naruki Terashima, all first-round picks. Orix took Yamamoto fourth. He won his first game on the top team the next summer. Nikkan Gendai, looking back in 2022, listed him with fourth-round picks such as Ichiro and Norichika Aoki, as Japan does when it talks about scouting that paid off.