Mike Salas
I have been watching Japanese baseball for a few years now. My intent was to study and follow three pitchers that could make a difference for the Dodgers organization. Two of the three pitchers were close to fulfilling their commitment to the NPB, and one was renegotiating his contract to jump to the MLB early.
We have to first start by understanding the differences between the NPB and MLB. I’m not going to go into the 74-year history of Japanese baseball or the 123-year history of the MLB, but some basic differences between the two leagues.
NPB – Nippon Professional Baseball consists of two leagues, the Central League and the Pacific League, which each have six teams. The season starts in late March or early April, and ends in October, with two or three all-star games in July.
Both leagues have since adopted 143-game seasons, 71 or 72 each at home and on road, facing their five respective intra-league opponents 25 times each and facing their six interleague opponents three times each in late May to early June in interleague play, with a separate champion being crowned for the team with the best record through the 18 games of interleague play. In general, Japanese teams play six games a week, with every Monday off (except on specific occasions, such as a game being played outside of the home team’s primary stadium or if a rainout forced a game to be postponed to a Monday).
Following the conclusion of each regular season, the top three teams from each league go on to play in the Climax Series championship play-off tournament, with the winner of each play-off tournament facing off in a best-of-seven championship series known as the Japan Series.
MLB – The Major League Baseball season schedule consists of 162 games for each of the 30 teams in the American League and National League, played over approximately six months.
The regular season is constructed from series. Due to travel concerns and the sheer number of games, pairs of teams are never scheduled to play single games against each other instead, they play games on several consecutive days in the same ballpark. Teams play one mid-week series and one weekend series per week. Depending on the length of the series, mid-week series games are usually scheduled between Monday and Thursday, while weekend games are scheduled between Thursday and Monday. Teams start and end their season on a weekend and play for 26½ weeks. Due to the mid-week all-star break in July, teams are scheduled to play 27 weekend series and 25 mid-week series for 52 total series (16 divisional series, 20 inter-divisional series, 16 inter-league series). A team’s road games are usually grouped into a multi-series road trip; home series are grouped into homestands.
Beginning with the 2023 season, teams play a balanced schedule as follows: thirteen games are played against each of the other four teams in their own division (52 games total), six or seven games against each of the other ten teams in their own league (64 games total), four games against one “geographic rival” from the other league, and three games against each of the other fourteen teams from the other league, for 46 total interleague games. Under this schedule, divisional games consist of two, three or four-game series, intraleague games consist of three or four-game series, and the interleague games consist of two two-game series against the geographic rival (one series home and one away) and a single three-game series against the other interleague opponents (the home team alternating every year).
After all that, you can see the difference of schedules, teams faced, travel, length of series, and playoff schedules. As I mentioned, I was focused on three players. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga, and Roki Sasaki.
Pitchers and position players who come from the NPB and KBO leagues will need to adjust the rigorous MLB schedule, travel, cultural differences, and fan enthusiasm/critique. Both Yamamoto and Imanaga need time to adjust to their new surroundings. They will have games of excellence, and they will have games of disappointment, just like two big named pitchers who also came from the NPB named Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani.
I’m not a big stat guy but let’s look at the first-year regular season stats of Darvish, Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Imamaga.
Yu Darvish – 29GS / 191IP / 14HR / 221SO / 3.90ERA / .220AVG / 1.28WHIP
Shohei Ohtani – 10GS / 51IP / 6HR / 63SO / 3.31ERA / .203AVG / 1.16WHIP
Yoshinobu Yamamoto – 18GS / 90IP / 7HR / 105SO / 3.00ERA / .229AVG / 1.11WHIP
Shota Imanaga – 29GS / 173IP / 27HR / 174SO / 2.91ERA / .225AVG / 1.02WHIP
As you can see, there is not a big difference between the four players in their first year in the MLB. Just like Darvish and Ohtani, Yamamoto and Imanaga will improve in the Major Leagues and will be dominant (if they stay injury free) pitchers for the teams they play for.
So, the criticism of Yamamoto in my opinion is not warranted. Yoshinobu will make the correct adjustments in the coming seasons and will be the number one or two starter the Dodgers organization signed him to be.
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