Japanese pro baseball will conduct its first active player draft in early December, and as unpromising as it sounds at this moment, some real good might come out of it, and not because of owners’ altruism.

It will be a kind of Japanese version of MLB’s Rule 5. Each team, it seems, will be required to list at least two players they are willing to part with and who agree to submit to a physical, and select one player from the draft pool.

Teams could choose their listed players by evaluating who is most likely to benefit from such a move. You know, saying, “This guy has been loyal and has talent but we don’t have a place to play him and we would love to see him get a shot to play every day with another team.”