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The is the current annual playoff system implemented by
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
's
Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''. Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...
(NPB). It determines which team from the
Central League The or is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League in the annual Japan Series. It currently consist ...
(CL) and from the
Pacific League The or is one of the two professional baseball leagues constituting Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship competes against the winner in the Central League for the annual Japan Series. It currently consis ...
(PL) will advance to compete for the championship in the
Japan Series The Japan Series ( , officially the Japan Championship Series, ), also the Nippon Series, :File:2014_JS_logo.png is the annual championship series in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top baseball league in Japan. It is a best-of-seven series ...
. After the creation of the NPB's two-league system in 1950, the PL experimented with three different playoff systems. In
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, it implemented the postseason structure from which the Climax Series is based. After three seasons, the CL adopted the same system in
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, creating the current, unified playoff format. Both leagues play a
regular season In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of Se ...
, after which the top three teams in each league compete against one another in a two-stage playoff. In the First Stage, the teams that finish the regular season with the second- and third-best records play one another in a
best-of-three series There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...
. The winners of these three-game series advance to the Final Stage to face each league's regular-season champion in a six-game series, which the regular-season champion starts with a one-game advantage. The winners of each league's Final Stage series compete against one another in that year's Japan Series.


History

Since the creation of the Nippon Professional Baseball's (NPB) two-league system, the regular-season winner of the Central League (CL) had always advanced to the
Japan Series The Japan Series ( , officially the Japan Championship Series, ), also the Nippon Series, :File:2014_JS_logo.png is the annual championship series in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top baseball league in Japan. It is a best-of-seven series ...
, where it competed against the Pacific League (PL) champion. The PL used the same system until 1973, when the league created NPB's only postseason play prior to 2004 (other than the Japan Series). This new system matched the team with the season's best first-half record against the team with the best second-half record. The winner of this best-of-five series advanced to the Japan Series, where they played against the CL champion. This system proved problematic when the
Hankyu Braves The are a Nippon Professional Baseball team formed as a result of the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment by the merger of the Orix BlueWave of Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes of Osaka, Osaka Prefectur ...
won both the first and second halves of the
1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
and 1978 seasons, making a playoff series unnecessary. It was eliminated after the 1982 season, and instead the PL announced the following season that the first- and second-place teams would compete in a best-of-five playoff series after the 130-game regular season if five or fewer games separated the two teams. Unpopular with most baseball media and fans, the idea was scrapped after three seasons with a series never needing to be played. The two leagues returned to sending the team with the best regular season record in their respective league to compete against each other in the championship series.


Pacific League playoffs

In February 2003, the Pacific League board of directors agreed to reintroduce a playoff system to be used for the 2004 NPB season. If a first-place team had a substantial lead in the standings nearing the end of the regular season, the league's champion would have been decided and there was little excitement until the start of the Japan Series. The decision to add a PL playoff was an attempt to rectify this problem and increase the league's popularity. The new postseason plan initiated a two-stage playoff in which the top three PL teams competed. In the First Stage, the teams that finished the newly shortened, 135-game regular season with the second- and third-best records played each other in a
best-of-three series There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...
. The winner of this series faced the league's top finisher in the second, final stage. The Second Stage winner advanced to the Japan Series, where they competed against the CL's Climax Series champion team. Originally, the top finisher in the league at the end of the season was only supposed to receive
home-field advantage In team sports, the term home advantage – also called home ground, home field, home-field advantage, home court, home-court advantage, defender's advantage or home-ice advantage – describes the benefit that the home team is said to g ...
throughout the Second Stage, but in August 2003, PL officials announced that if the first-place team led the second-place team by more than five games at the end of the regular season, that team would also receive a one-game winning advantage in the Second Stage's best-of-five series. For the 2006 Pacific League Playoffs, PL officials removed the five-game lead requirement in favor of automatically awarding the first-place team the one-win advantage. In conjunction with this change, the first-place team no longer had home-field advantage for the entirety of the Second Stage; instead, the remaining four games were to be split evenly between both teams' stadiums. This rule change became a non-factor after the eventual first-place
Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters The are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Kitahiroshima, Hokkaidō. They compete in the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball, playing the majority of their home games at ES CON Field Hokkaido. The Fighters also host a ...
clinched a Japan Series berth in two straight games. During the three years of the PL's playoff system, the winner of the PL's postseason tournament competed against the CL team who finished the regular season with the best record. The disparity between the two leagues' postseasons provoked some criticism from baseball analysts and insiders. During the 2005 Japan Series, ''
The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...
'' Stephen Ellsesser called NPB's unbalanced postseason a "bad system" and believed that the CL's decision to not implement a playoff system of their own was "foolish". Citing the
Hanshin Tigers The Hanshin Tigers (Japanese: 阪神タイガース ''Hanshin Taigāsu'') are a Nippon Professional Baseball team playing in the Central League. The team is based in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, and is owned by Hanshin Electric Railway ...
' poor Japan Series performance, he speculated that the CL's lack of postseason play was a disadvantage. Ellsesser believed that the 17 days between their last regular-season game and the first Japan Series game did nothing to prepare the Tigers for the eventual championship series against the
Chiba Lotte Marines The are a professional baseball team in Japan's Pacific League based in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, in the Kantō region, and owned by Lotte Holdings Co., Ltd. History The Marines franchise began in 1950 as the Mainichi Orions, an inaugural ...
, who had played continuously. Like Ellsesser, after seeing the "excitement" that the 2004 PL Playoffs caused, then-Marines manager
Bobby Valentine Robert John Valentine (born May 13, 1950), nicknamed "Bobby V", is an American former professional baseball player and manager. He also served as the athletic director at Sacred Heart University. Valentine played for the Los Angeles Dodgers (196 ...
was "incredulous that the Central League didn’t follow suit" and create a playoff series of their own.


Climax Series creation

The Central League had situational playoff scenarios written into its
bylaw A by-law (bye-law, by(e)law, by(e) law), or as it is most commonly known in the United States bylaws, is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authorit ...
s that required either a tie in the standings or a team with more wins finishing with a worse
winning percentage In sports, a winning percentage is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the total number of match ...
than the top team, but a permanent playoff plan had never been created. In March 2006, encouraged by the success of the PL's playoff series, CL officials announced their intention to introduce postseason playoffs for the 2007 season to help boost declining attendance. During meetings held later that year, PL and CL officials disagreed over proposed plans detailing the new playoff system. Since the creation of the PL playoffs in 2004, the league awarded its pennant titles to the playoff winners rather than the team who finished the regular season with the best record. The PL disapproved of the CL's intentions to continue awarding their league title to the first-place finisher in the regular season while using the playoffs to determine which team would compete against in the Japan Series. In September 2006, both leagues agreed on a unified postseason system. The CL implemented a playoff system identical to the PL's, and the entire playoff series was dubbed the "Climax Series". The PL agreed to name the regular season first-place finishers league champions rather than the team that won the leagues' respective playoffs—a reversal from the previous three seasons. It was decided that both leagues would play 144 regular-season games, the first time both leagues would play the same number of games since the PL introduced its playoff system in 2004. The two leagues also agreed that neither regular-season champion should receive a one-game advantage in the Final Stage of the Climax Series, claiming that it was unnecessary from a business point of view. It had been suggested that the Yomiuri Giants voted to approve the playoff idea in 2006 because they had not finished atop the standings in the regular season since 2002 and the playoff concept would increase the Giants' chances of winning the Japan Series. However, the plan backfired on them. In the Climax Series' inaugural season, the Giants finally won the CL pennant but were still denied a Japan Series berth when they were defeated by the second-place
Chunichi Dragons The are a professional baseball team based in Nagoya, the chief city in the Chūbu region of Japan. The team plays in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. They have won the Central League pennant nine times (most recently in 2011) ...
in a three-game sweep during the Final Stage of the 2007 Central League Climax Series. The next season, the leagues overturned their decision on the Final Stage advantage and agreed to award their champions an automatic one-win advantage in the Final Stage starting with the 2008 Climax Series. At the same time, the Final Stage changed from a best-of-five series and became a best-of-seven series, where the first team to accumulate four wins advances to the Japan Series. The 2020 season, shortened to 120 games because of the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, featured a modified Climax Series. The PL Climax Series had the season's top-two seeded teams play a best-of-five series, with the league's champion still being awarded the automatic one-win advantage. The CL forwent a playoff series completely, instead advancing their league champion directly to the Japan Series. The CL's decision to eliminate their Climax Series was due in part to just two of the league's six teams regularly playing in domed stadiums, making it unclear how many games would need to be made-up at the end of the season due to potential rainouts.


Current format

Both leagues employ the same postseason format, with the top three teams from each league participating in their own two-stage playoff. Teams are ranked via their regular-season winning percentage. If teams finish with the same winning percentage, the following criteria are used to rank them: Central League :1. The team with the higher number of wins advances :2. The team with the higher winning percentage in head-to-head games advances :3. The team with the higher ranking the previous season advances Pacific League :1. The team with the higher winning percentage in head-to-head games advances :2. The team with the higher winning percentage in regular-season games excluding interleague games advances :3. The team with the higher ranking the previous season advances The First Stage is a best-of-three series involving the regular season's second- and third-place finishers, with all games played at the second-place team's home field. The winner of this series goes on to face the league's pennant-winner in the Final Stage. This series is best-of-six. The league champion is awarded a one-win advantage as well as home field advantage for the entire series, unlike most professional leagues where a 5-game playoff series runs 2-2-1 or 2-3 or a 7-game playoff series that runs 2-3-2 with the higher seed receiving the extra game. The winning teams advance to the Japan Series, where they compete against one another. Unlike MLB, NPB games may end in a tie if there is no winner after 12 innings of play. If a Climax Series game results in a tie, the win is credited to neither team. If this causes the series to end in a tie, the higher-seeded team advances.


Results

The league champions were knocked out of the Climax Series and therefore didn't advance to the Japan Series six times total, three times in each the PL and CL. : The team won the stage. :BOLD: The team went on to win the Japan Series. : The inaugural 2007 Second Stage was a best-of-five series that did not award the league champion with a one-win advantage. : Due to ongoing offseason renovations at
Koshien Stadium , commonly referred to as simply Koshien Stadium, is a baseball park located near Kobe, Hyōgo, Kobe in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. The stadium was built to host the High school baseball in Japan, national high school baseball tourn ...
, the Hanshin Tigers' home stadium, the 2008 First Stage games were instead played at
Kyocera Dome Osaka The (official name: ) is a baseball stadium located in Osaka, Osaka, Japan. Opened in 1997, the stadium was the home field of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. In 2005, the stadium became one of the homes of the Orix Buffaloes, a result of the mer ...
.
: The team won the stage. :BOLD: The team went on to win the Japan Series. : The inaugural 2007 Second Stage was a best-of-five series that did not award the league champion with a one-win advantage. : Instead of hosting the first game of the 2008 Second Stage at
Seibu Dome (official name: ) is a baseball stadium located in Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan. It is home to the Saitama Seibu Lions, a professional baseball team. The stadium has a roof over the field and the stands, like other indoor ballparks. However, it la ...
, the Saitama Seibu Lions' home stadium, they instead held it at Omiya Park Baseball Stadium, a smaller, Saitama-based stadium.
: Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the 2020 Final Stage was reduced to a best-of-five series, with the league champion receiving an automatic one-win advantage.


Reception and criticism

After being implemented for the 2007 season, the Climax Series drew mixed reviews. The implementation of a unified playoff system in NPB was welcomed by some.
Robert Whiting Robert Whiting (born October 24, 1942) is a best-selling author and journalist who has written several books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Jer ...
described its creation as "long overdue" and believes it stimulates more interest in Japanese baseball. Japanese baseball writer Asa Satoshi explains that while the system isn't perfect, it reduces the number of throwaway
dead rubber Dead rubber is a term used in sporting parlance to describe a match in a series where the series result has already been decided by earlier matches. The dead rubber match therefore has no effect on the winner and loser of the series, other than the ...
games played and its need is reinforced by its popularity with fans. However, Satoshi goes on to question the decision to award the league pennant to the team with the highest winning percentage instead of its Climax Series champion. The decision leads to scenarios where a team can be named the best team in Japan after winning the Japan Series, however at the same time the team wasn't crowned the best team in their respective league. Furthermore, the system allows for teams with sub-.500 winning percentages to qualify for the Climax Series. Satoshi proposes the hypothetical situation in which a team that won less than 50% of their regular-season games wins a Japan Series title and questions if that team could be rightfully named the best in Japan. Others, however, believe that the Climax Series is wholly unnecessary. Former NPB player and coach Katsumi Hirosawa believes that it is unreasonable for a team that overwhelmingly won the regular season to be defeated in the Climax Series, even if that defeat generates excitement. He also argues that a system that allows for half of the teams to advance to the playoffs and potentially win the Japan Series undermines the purpose of a long regular season. Various other details in how the system operates has been debated and criticized. The tiebreaker that determines which team moves on to the Climax Series in the event that two teams end the regular season with the same record has also drawn criticism. Currently, the team that finished higher in the league standings the previous season holds an advantage. This contrasts with
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
(MLB), which employs a
one-game playoff A one-game playoff, sometimes known as a pennant playoff, tiebreaker game or knockout game, is a tiebreaker in certain sports—usually but not always professional—to determine which of two teams, tied in the final standings, will qualify for a ...
(if only one team advances), or other professional leagues that may use head-to-head season records (and further tiebreakers such as non-
interleague play Interleague play in Major League Baseball refers to regular-season baseball games played between an American League (AL) team and a National League (NL) team. Interleague play was first introduced during the 1997 Major League Baseball season. Pr ...
records, second half records, et al.). Former Hiroshima Carp bench coach Jeff Livesey explained that in one instance his team was actually a full game further behind the Hanshin Tigers than the standings showed because unlike the Tigers, the Carp could not enter the Climax Series in the event of a tie. Former player
Scott McClain Scott Michael McClain (born May 19, 1972) is a former Major League Baseball third baseman who is a scout in Nippon Professional Baseball. A versatile athlete, he played quarterback for Atascadero High School in Atascadero, California and signed ...
believes that "
he tiebreaker He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
should have nothing to do with last year", pointing out that players and managers change from year to year. ''
The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...
'' columnist Wayne Graczyk has suggested that this format be scrapped in favor of MLB's one-game playoff. The most scrutinized aspect of the Climax Series is the one-game advantage that is awarded to the regular-season champions for the Final Stage. When the rule was implemented the for the 2008 Climax Series, many players reacted negatively with some describing the rule as "unfair", "bad", "bull" and "messed up". Former player and current manager
Alex Ramírez Alexander Ramón Ramírez Quiñónez (born 3 October 1974) is a Venezuelan-born Japanese former professional baseball outfielder who had a long career in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He is the first foreign-born player to record 2 ...
, however, believed that the league champion deserves the advantage. ''The Japan Times'' columnist Jason Coskrey believes that the "phantom win" gives the pennant winner too much of an advantage. According to him, the First Stage bye plus all home games during the Final Stage should be advantage enough for the top- seeded team. He describes the situation as NPB "trying to have its cake and eat it too" by trying to reap the benefits of a playoff system while also trying to maintain the traditional showdown of pennant winners in the Japan Series. Looking back over the first ten years of the Climax Series, Satoshi believed that it was an ideal form postseason entertainment. Through that time, the league champion won the Climax Series and advanced to the Japan Series almost 82% of the time. He believed this to be the right balance as it maintained the importance of the regular season while also allowing for an occasional surprise that excited fans. In 2017, the system again drew criticism, this time for allowing games to be called early because of weather and treating them as
official game In baseball, an official game (regulation game in the Major League Baseball rulebook) is a game where nine innings have been played, except when the game is scheduled with fewer innings, extra innings are required to determine a winner, or the game ...
s (postseason games in North America's Major League Baseball since 2009 must be played to the full nine innings). After the
Yokohama DeNA BayStars The are a professional baseball team in the Japan, Japanese Central League. Their home field is Yokohama Stadium, located in central Yokohama. The team has been known by several names since becoming a professional team in 1950. It adopted its c ...
lost a 5-inning game in the 2017 Central League Climax Series, Coskrey wrote that playoff games should never end in that manner. He suggested that NPB could have easily suspended the game and resumed where it left off the next day or even postponed the game entirely until the next day. Similarly, in an article for
Yahoo Sports Yahoo! Sports is a sports news website launched by Yahoo! on December 8, 1997. It receives a majority of its information from STATS, Inc. It employs numerous writers, and has team pages for teams in almost every North American major sport. Bef ...
, Craig Calcaterra called the Climax Series "super unfair" after the incident and imagined a similar hypothetical situation in the MLB playoffs and concluded that fans would "riot".


See also

*
Major League Baseball postseason The Major League Baseball postseason is an elimination tournament held after the conclusion of the Major League Baseball (MLB) regular season. Starting in 2022, the playoffs for each league—American and National—consist of two best-of-three ...


References


Notes


Citations

{{good article Recurring sporting events established in 2007