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The story
Debate broke out on 5ch’s general sports board (Nanademo Jikkyou G) over Nippon Professional Baseball’s Climax Series (CS) qualification and which teams are actually built for short playoff series. It started with the view that “it’s strange to hand out an advantage based purely on full-season standings” — one camp argued that by recent win percentage, Yokohama (DeNA) would actually be sitting in first place, while another countered that full-season results are the only fair measure. The thread also dug into the Yomiuri Giants’ weakness in short series and their long slump, plus their head-to-head record against SoftBank in interleague play, with plenty of analysis grounded in each team’s circumstances.
What people said
Going by win percentage since September, Yokohama would be in first
Can't hand the Japan Series spot to a team sitting 1st or 2nd purely on wins banked up in spring and summer
Giving the Japan Series spot to a team that's only 2 games over .500 seems questionable too
By record since July, Yokohama's actually in first
Hanshin ☆○○○
Yokohama ●●●
That said, they got swept straight out last year
It's just wrong that reaching the CS Final feels routine for a team that finished 3rd…
Those were just bait games (early-season games sacrificed as "chum," not meant to be taken seriously)
And two years ago he wasn't even in the active roster
Wasn't he injured back then?
Two years ago was his rookie season fresh out of high school, so of course he's grown since
Aren't they close to the worst team at it?
Yeah, they can't win when it matters most — that's also why they missed the pennant
Is that the takeaway?
They got blown out last year though, so it's pitching, right?
They can't keep acting like the lords of the league anymore
They're just an average team now
No star players, nothing flashy about them
Their parent company's in a declining industry
Their player development is nonexistent
All they do is collect other teams' aging veterans
The only "league leader" thing left is being based in Tokyo
They used to win it about once every three years back in the day
The era of buying your way to wins is over
Now that they can't win a money fight against MLB, it's an era of developing your own talent
No more reverse-designation picks (the old draft system letting top prospects choose their team), no poaching foreign stars anymore, and no big names coming through free agency either
12 wins, 13 losses, 98 runs scored, 99 runs allowed
At Koshien
5 wins, 5 losses
That's genuinely even
One of those wins was an extra-innings 1-run squeaker against a hungover Hanshin the day after they'd clinched the pennant
So really it should've been 14 wins, 11 losses
Probably just hadn't built up enough data on them yet
By season's end they're scouted so thoroughly that teams run player-specific shifts against them
They spend the first half collecting data then hit the gas in the second half — same every year
Feels like Maru personally didn't profit at all though (wordplay on "maru-moke," meaning pure profit, and the player's name Maru)
Well, for the 2nd-place team, giving it your all at home and still losing is actually the most profitable outcome
So they probably wanted at least one win
What even was that at the end
This isn't a ceremonial first pitch, come on 😅
Richard just drew a massive dud on the lottery, that's all
Even the battery exchanging signs looked like they sensed something was off
Yeah, nobody expected him to be the pick for "hero of the game"
Background and key arguments in this debate
The Climax Series (CS) is a format introduced in 2007 that grants the league’s first-place team a one-win head start at the opening of the Final Stage. It’s meant to reward performance across the full season, but in the thread, the view that recent win percentage better reflects true current strength clashed with the view that rankings should be decided by full-season totals. Both sides have some logic to them, and since the debate ties into broader opinions for or against the CS system itself, no clear consensus emerged. The comments about the Giants’ long slump were likewise just thread opinion — several posters pointed to limits in the team’s player development and its free-agency and foreign-player acquisitions — but it’s worth noting these are 5ch commentary, not an official analysis.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyou G) thread “DeNA BayStars, Demons of the Short Series — The Japan Series Is Inevitable!“
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