By Bill Thompson, Words Above Replacement

Baseball fans across the world have been left in an interesting situation. There’s currently only one league putting on competitive regular-season games, Liga Nacional de Béisbol out of El Salvador, and their games are not streamed anywhere. This has left baseball fans starved for content and with no idea when live baseball that the majority can at the bare minimum stream from their own homes will return. Things look bleak in that regard in America. Independent leagues are announcing delays to their seasons, while both Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball have essentially delayed their seasons indefinitely.

While there may not be anywhere for baseball fans to turn right now that could be changing in the coming days. Most of the western hemisphere is struggling to handle the COVID-19 outbreak but that is not true on the eastern side of the world, specifically in Asian countries. Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball is one of the leagues in the Australasia region that is holding practice games again. It’s still unclear when the regular season will start, and for the foreseeable future, these practice games will have no live fans in attendance. Still, it’s professional baseball in a time when baseball fans could really use some tyle of baseball to help deal with the rest of the outside world’s issues.

NPB is Japan’s dominant baseball organization, but its reach has never extended much beyond Japan. Most of that is due to those in charge of NPB not seeing the need to extend their league beyond Japanese borders, outside of some small outreach to Taiwan. All the same, NPB has over the course of the past 70 years built up a reputation as one of the premier professional baseball outfits the world over. Right now is the perfect time to learn a little more about NPB and how you can watch live baseball, and keep watching once those practice games turn into regular-season games.

NPB formed out of the ashes of the Japanese Baseball League in 1949. Games were first played in 1950 and the organization has never looked back. I say organization because NPB consists of four leagues; the Central (JPCL), Pacific (JPPL), Eastern (JPEL), and Western (JPWL). The JPEL and JPWL are NPB’s minor leagues and they operate much the same as MiLB teams do in affiliated baseball. They serve only as a feeder system for their JPPL or JPCL counterparts. There’s not much to know about NPB’s minor leagues and the focus of this article is mainly on the two main leagues in the form of the JPCL and JPPL.

There are slight differences between the two leagues, but they also share some similarities. In terms of play, the only real difference is that the JPPL uses a designated hitter while the JPCL does not. Interleague games only take place during a specific point near the middle of the season and when that happens the teams honor the rules of the home team’s league. Otherwise, most gameplay rules are the same between both leagues. The 12-inning rule will shock many first time viewers. Unlike baseball in North America, there are ties in NPB. If a game is tied after 12 innings then the game is officially ruled a draw, this includes playoff games.

Rosters in NPB are twenty-five on game day, but the actual active roster is twenty-seven with teams able to move players from active to inactive every day. Each team is allowed to have four foreign-born players on their roster. However, those foreign-born players need to be a mix of pitchers and position players, it can’t be all pitchers or all position players. Once a foreign-born player reaches nine years of service time they become a native player and no longer count against a team’s foreign-roster slots. Most teams also have six starting pitchers as typically pitchers will only pitch once a week with Monday being an off day for both leagues.

The playoffs are standardized across NPB. Both leagues use a Climax Series format. The top three teams in each league advance to the playoffs. In the first stage, the second and third place teams square off in a best-of-three series where each game takes place at the home field of the second-place team. The winner of that advances to the final stage to face the regular season winner in a best-of-seven series. The catch is that the regular-season winner starts the final with a one-game advantage and gets home field throughout the series. When a playoff game ends in a tie it goes in the books as exactly that. If the series itself ends tied the team with the better regular-season record advances, and if the two teams had identical records then the team that won the head-to-head regular season match-up advances.

The winner of each league’s Climax Series final stage advances to the Japan Series. It’s a best-of-seven game series in the same exact format as the World Series. The lone exception to that is that as stated above games can end in ties. Traditionally the NPB season lasts from the end of March until the Japan Series at the end of October. There is also a Farm Championship Game between the champions of the JPEL and JPWl that takes place at the beginning of October. Of course, due to the current global pandemic, it’s unclear what timeline these series’ will operate under this year.

Both leagues have six teams. The JPCL consists of the Chunichi Dragons, Hanshin Tigers, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Yokohama DeNA BayStars, and Yomiuri Giants. The Giants are the perennial JPCL powerhouse and no matter what changes take place in the world the Giants seem to find their way back to the top of the JPCL standings. The JPPL consists of the Chiba Lotte Marines, Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, Orix Buffaloes, Saitama Seibu Lions, and Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. The Hawks aren’t just the cream of the JPPL crop, they are the cream of the NPB in general. They’ve won seven of the last ten Japan Series titles.

That brings us to a harsh reality within NPB that has set in over the past decade. In terms of innovation, growth, development, and overall play the JPPL has moved significantly ahead of the JPCL. At this point, it’s no longer a question of which JPCL team will possibly take home a Japan Series title but rather which JPCL team will inevitably lose in the Japan Series. Both leagues play similar styles of baseball with a focus on small ball. Still, JPPL teams play it better, identify foreigners who will excel in Japan far better, and cultivate homegrown players that outperform their JPCL counterparts. At some point that will change and the JPCL will catch up, or they won’t and that would suck.

The overall level of play in NPB is around a AAAA-level. I know this isn’t an official level, but anyone who watches professional baseball outside the Unites States understands that there are leagues that are better than AAA-level but not quite Major League-level. The JPCL and JPPL are two such leagues. There are plenty of players in NPB that you should already know and those who you will get to know soon. Some names to look out for are Adam Jones, Jabari Blash, Liván Moinelo, Carter Stewart, Roki Sasaki, Seiya Suzuki, Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Yanagita, Tomoyuki Sugano, Koudai Senga, and Kris Johnson. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, NPB is full of top-level talent, including plenty from Cuba thanks to a working agreement with the Cuban government.

If you’re interested and want to watch some NPB action, practice games or not, then Pacific League TV and ToraTele have your back. For $15/month live streams are offered of every JPPL game, interleague games where the JPPL squad is the home team, interleague games where the Hanshin Tigers are the home team, and JPPL Climax Series games. Home games of any JPEL or JPWL team that is affiliated with a JPPL team are also included. For $7/month ToraTele offers streams of every Hanshin Tigers home game and any home game the Tigers play at the Tokyo Dome, this includes any Climax Series games. Both services have a mobile app that makes watching games super easy and convenient. The downside is that no other JPCL games are offered on any streaming service. The Japan Series also isn’t streamed anywhere, and if the Farm Championship Game doesn’t involve a JPPL affiliate as the home team then it is also not streamed anywhere. This combined with start times that range from 2 am to 6 am central standard time does, sadly, create some access problems with NPB as a whole.

For the past few years, I’ve enjoyed every single NPB game I could watch. It is at its heart a collection of leagues that play the game at a very high level and offer an enjoyable brand of baseball. I highly recommend checking out some NPB action if you get the chance and hopefully when MLB and MiLB start up again you’ll stick around and keep enjoying the fun and dynamic baseball of NPB.