Japanese Baseball

From SoSH

1 Overview
2 Rules for Foreigners
3 Nippon Professional Baseball
- 3.1 Central League
- 3.2 Pacific League
4 Japanese Red Sox
5 External Links

Overview

The Nippon Professional Baseball League is split into two leagues, the Central League and the Pacific League. The regular season consists of about 140 games, followed by a best-of-seven series between the two league winners, known as the Japan Series. The Yomiuri Giants have the most Japan Series championships, but they haven't won since 2002.

Several things are different about Japanese baseball. For one, the parks are smaller than the U.S. Additionally, due to a lack of hard-throwers, baseballs in Japan tend to be smaller and have better grip, making it easier to throw junkball-type pitches. In fact, there is no standard baseball across the country, as each team can choose their own. The pitching rotation also tends to contain six pitchers instead of five, and since there is usually no game on Monday, this means that pitchers generally pitch the same day of the week every week.

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Rules for Foreigners

For many years, each team was allowed just two foreigners per team. Recently, this has been upped to four on the 25 man roster, though the four cannot all be position players, nor can they all be pitchers. However, the teams may have as many foreigners on their minor league affiliate as they wish. Often, these foreigners are unsuccessful MLB players, though sometimes they are former Korean or Taiwanese League stars who were lured to Japan. Japanese teams tend to shy away from foreign catchers and middle infielders because of communication (i.e. language) issues, opting instead for pitchers and corner infielders and outfielders.

While the foreigner quotas are low, there are a couple ways to get around them, though none of the methods are exploited with great frequency. A player who attends high school or college in Japan may be considered a Japanese player, as might a player who has played amateur Japanese baseball for 3 years. Additionally, a foreigner who has played in Japan long enough to become a free agent (9 years) is considered a Japanese player; however, this has only happened to one player (pitcher Kaku Taigen) since the rule was instituted in 1997. In 2004, the NPB added the rule that a player may be considered Japanese if he was drafted in the amateur draft after living in Japan for four years.

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