NPB for New Fans: How Japan's Pro Baseball Season Works
If Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, or Roki Sasaki led you here, welcome — NPB is where they learned their trade, and following a pennant race in Japan is its own distinct pleasure. Here are the structural basics you need to read our standings pages fluently.
Two leagues, twelve clubs
NPB is split into the Central League and the Pacific League, six clubs each. There are no divisions — every league race is a single table from first to sixth, which makes games-behind arithmetic (and magic numbers) especially direct.
Clubs are owned and branded by corporations rather than cities, which is why names read like Yomiuri Giants or Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks: sponsor first (sometimes with a region attached), nickname second.
The schedule
Each club plays 143 regular-season games from late March to early October: 125 inside its own league (25 against each rival) plus 18 interleague games in late spring. The pennant — first place by winning percentage — is decided within each league.
Yes, games can end in a draw
The single biggest surprise for MLB fans: NPB regular-season games are capped in length, and a game still level when the limit is reached goes into the books as a draw. Draws are excluded from winning percentage — wins divided by wins plus losses — so two teams can sit in a different order than their win totals alone would suggest.
Draws are also why NPB clinch math needs care: our calculators account for remaining head-to-head games and the possibility of draws when computing every magic number and CS scenario on this site.
How the season ends
October belongs to the Climax Series — each league's top three teams playing down to one survivor — and the two league representatives then meet in the Nippon Series, Japan's championship. Finishing first buys big structural advantages in that playoff, which is why the pennant race stays meaningful to the final week.
- Pennant race: March–October, 143 games, decided by winning percentage.
- Climax Series: each league's top 3, October.
- Nippon Series: the two CS winners, late October.
Today's standings & magic numbers
The home page recalculates magic numbers and Climax Series clinch scenarios for both leagues every day, and each team page has a what-if simulator for upcoming games.