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The story
After opening the season with five straight losses, the Chunichi Dragons have never recovered and now sit in last place. Manager Kazuki Inoue has signaled he wants to continue next season, but 5ch users are split — debating the team’s chances in the third-place race, the lack of any real successor, and the front office’s rebuilding strategy.
What people said
Whether they're incompetent or capable doesn't even matter — just look at Inoue and you'll get it.
Nagoya fans don't care about being strong, so that call was correct.
.220, 18 homers, 38 RBI — calling that an "upgrade" is a stretch.
There's gotta be someone out there.
Word is someone's angling for it just to be a wrecking ball, or chasing that cursed "666" number (a jab implying a doomed tenure).
Aichi has such a huge economy and population, so why does it only have the one soccer team?
Iwata's team is based in Mikawa, which is basically half Aichi already — just settle for that.
Grampus, backed by Toyota, is just too big a presence — no room for anyone else to break in.
Nah, it wasn't pointless.
Honestly, the lineup from Yoda's peak years was flat-out stronger than the current one. This team has straight-up regressed.
You think the players from Yoda's peak just never aged a day? That argument doesn't hold up.
That was clearly because the front office just wasn't putting in any effort. They ran the draft themselves, and the only real outside reinforcement was Garber.
If you think this roster can actually compete, you've got Chuni-Dora brain. (i.e., blind homer optimism)
Even if the pennant's out of reach, the Climax Series is totally within grasp. Their last CS appearance was 2012, so even that alone would be an achievement.
It was pointless. Abe ended up coming back and becoming a starter anyway, and Sunada, who was supposed to replace Kyoda, got cut. They drafted position players and still ended up with zero regular outfielders, and in the infield Muramatsu and Fukunaga are only passable. On top of that the pitching staff is a wreck — I have no idea what they were even going for.
Signing Nakata was genuinely bad. And then there's dumping Gunji, who actually had prospect upside.
During the dark age the stands were empty, though.
Why are you lying? Hanshin fans don't bother showing up unless the team's actually good. It's nothing but fair-weather fans lol
More than the Hanshin series, sweeping the Friday-Saturday-Sunday set at Hama Stadium (Yokohama Stadium) is what would actually get them into the third-place race.
Can't argue with that — the front office and parent company are trash.
They probably did it on purpose — someone's got to be around to pull the boneheaded plays…
Background and Key Points
The Chunichi Dragons are one of NPB’s oldest franchises, owned outright by the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper rather than a conglomerate that treats baseball as a marketing arm — a structural difference from teams like Hanshin (Hanshin Electric Railway) or Yomiuri, and it’s part of why posters keep calling the front office cheap rather than just unlucky. The team’s last real golden age was under Hiromitsu Ochiai (2004–2011), whose defense-first, low-scoring style won a Japan Series but got mocked as boring; the current last-place slump, following the roster teardown pushed by former manager Kazuyoshi Tatsunami (nicknamed “Datsu”), is what makes commenters compare today’s lineup unfavorably to even the tail end of the Tsuyoshi Yoda era. Kazuki Inoue took over from Tatsunami, and the thread isn’t united on the basic question of whether he should stay: some argue no realistic replacement exists (Ibata and Yoshimi already discredited by their WBC coaching), others insist the rebuild itself was pointless and demand a front-office purge like Hanshin’s, and there’s a real split on whether a Climax Series berth — something Chunichi hasn’t reached since 2012 — is even plausible this year.
What’s easy to miss without NPB context: the Climax Series only takes the top three finishers, so “third place” chatter isn’t about winning the pennant, just scraping into the postseason at all. Also unstated in the thread is that Nagoya’s Aichi Prefecture is one of Japan’s wealthiest regions (Toyota’s home base), which is exactly why posters casually assume attendance and profit will hold up regardless of on-field results — a comfort other struggling franchises don’t have.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Chunichi Manager Kazuki Inoue Wants to Stay On Despite Slump… Team in Last Place Too.”
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