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The story
The Central League’s mid-table race has turned into a scramble. On a 5ch live-commentary thread, fans buzzed about how just 1.5 games separate the Hanshin Tigers from the Yomiuri Giants, and another 1.5 games separate the DeNA BayStars from the Chunichi Dragons — with the Yakult Swallows and Hiroshima Carp squeezed in between.
Posters threw out hard numbers — home run totals, win-loss margins above and below .500, and tomorrow’s starting pitchers — as they tried to call how the race for a Climax Series spot would play out.
What people said
BayStars-Dragons: 1.5 games (with Yakult and Hiroshima sandwiched in between)
Hiroshima's in last place though, right?
Heck, if the Giants keep getting beaten up by the Tigers, could Chunichi even end up in 2nd?
At Koshien, the Giants should have a winning record against the Tigers.
That's not happening unless Hiroshima suddenly catches fire (goes on a miracle hot streak).
Lol, quit talking about Kozono like he's some cursed piece of gear.
The bottom four teams are just too weak.
Lol, in this scrub league even 1st place in the Central League isn't worth much.
Tigers 101
Dragons 97
BayStars 95
Giants 86
Carp 73
Swallows 67
The 'terrace effect' (Jingu Stadium's shortened home-run porch) is wild, but it's crazy Yakult is still dead last despite playing there…
Tigers teams like that never pan out — they always end up getting nosed out by the Giants right at the very end.
There's never actually been a year with the Tigers 1st and the Giants 2nd, to begin with.
When the Tigers win it, it's usually a three-way scramble with the Giants finishing 3rd.
And the first-place team is 13 games over .500, lmao.
That's because they handed the Pacific League 26 games' worth of over-.500 record in interleague play.
Yeah, they kept handing over-.500 wins to the Pacific League during interleague play.
Over there it's the opposite — the top 3 Pacific League teams are all double digits over .500, and even 4th and 5th place are only single digits under .500.
And Matsuyama's on his 5th straight day pitching, so he's probably unusable.
The only way to win is a complete game.
(If you wanna win) then go earn the damn win with your own strength!
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Giants win 2 straight
Tigers lose 2 straight
Though apparently there's a high chance Friday and Saturday's games get rained out.
Well, it's the 'second-tier league' (a jab that the Central League is weaker than the Pacific League), so it can't be helped.
Lol, the rules aren't quite that brutal.
No way that's happening.
They'll sweep the Giants and lock up their magic number, watch.
It's Murakami, Saiki, and Takahashi pitching.
Meanwhile the Giants are sending out Tanaka 'Ma-kun' (nickname for Masahiro Tanaka).
Yeah, that's right.
If the opponent in the Final Stage has a losing record or is 10+ games back, it becomes a first-to-5-wins series (out of 7), so the lower-seeded team needs to go at least 5-2 to advance.
If Friday and Saturday get rained out on top of that, the schedule's going to be jam-packed clear into early October.
'Yagai'? You mean 'okugai' (both words mean 'outdoor' — just a nitpick over which reading/kanji was used).
Don't sandwich in three phoned-in starters.
Manager Fujikawa's an idiot, honestly.
He didn't even need to mess with the rotation for a team like the Giants — they'd have won anyway.
Lol, this guy's seriously going on about how it's the catcher's fault.
My prediction: the next 3-game road series against DeNA (Yokohama BayStars) decides the big picture.
If they don't sweep it, things look pretty rough considering how many games are left.
He was shaking off the catcher's signs like crazy again — clearly not on the same page.
They didn't want to use him because Matsuyama's on his 4th straight day pitching.
How many times do you think we've been let down already?
I thought they might win tomorrow, but Tsuchida just got shelled, and with Yumemaru (nickname for the starter) on the mound, they're probably losing this one too.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s professional baseball league, NPB, splits into the Central and Pacific Leagues, six teams each, with no direct promotion or relegation. Since 2007 the top three finishers in each league have advanced to the “Climax Series,” a two-round playoff that decides who reaches the Japan Series — a system Japanese fans still argue distorts a 130-plus-game regular season, which is why the pennant winner gets a game (or, as posters note, up to a two-win) head start in the Final Stage against whichever third-place team squeaks in. That mechanic is exactly what’s under discussion here: a team with a losing record, like the leaderboard shows for third through sixth place this year, could still make the postseason purely by finishing above two even-weaker rivals.
The thread doesn’t actually disagree on the standings — those are just facts everyone quotes back and forth. Where it splits is on manager Fujikawa’s rotation management: some posters treat holding back the ace against Chunichi to save him for Yomiuri as smart, decisive strategy that will let Hanshin seal the pennant by beating the Giants outright; others call it reckless mismanagement that could hand Chunichi and Yomiuri free wins and blow the race open.
What outside readers should catch is the “second-tier league” jab: it references a real, long-running pattern where Pacific League teams have outperformed Central League teams in official interleague play for years, which literally inflates Pacific teams’ win totals and deflates Central ones — the 26-game swing cited isn’t hyperbole, it’s the accounting explanation for why even a division leader here sits only modestly over .500.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[BREAKING] Chunichi Dragons Now Just 1.5 Games From a Climax Series Spot LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.”
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