Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 434 - 70: Explosive Season Stats

Winning the final game against the Ham Team with a score of 3-0, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks’ season record ultimately settled at 77 wins, 65 losses, and 2 draws.

This record lags 5.5 games behind this year’s Pacific League champions, the Rakuten Golden Eagles, and is 2 games ahead of the third-ranked Saitama Seibu Lions. Although they couldn’t achieve the winning goal set at the beginning of the season, considering the various unexpected situations that occurred this season, it’s indeed remarkable that the SoftBank Team completed the official season games with such a record.

With the standings confirmed, the groupings for the climax series were freshly unveiled:

On the Pacific League side, SoftBank and Seibu, who secured second and third positions in the official games, will face each other in the first round of the climax series. They need to play a best-of-three series, with the winner advancing to the next round for a chance to challenge the Rakuten Team. As the higher-ranked side, the SoftBank Team will have the entire home-field advantage in this series, with all three games arranged at the Fukuoka Yahoo Dome;

Meanwhile, the champion of the Pacific League, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, can stay comfortably in the lead, not only advancing directly to the second round as champions but also securing the entire home-field advantage and the crucial 1-game win according to the rules.

In other words, if Lin Guanglai and the SoftBank Team can defeat Seibu and progress to the second round, they would essentially be starting the entire series with a 0:1 disadvantage in the big games, needing to beat their opponents 4 times in 6 games to compete as the second-ranked team in the official games for Japan’s number one.

This is why, to most Nippon Professional Baseball fans, winning within the league during the official games is often more prestigious and appealing than the "Japan’s Number One" title:

After all, compared to the highly random climax series and Japan Series, which might see entire series outcomes driven by individual brilliance, the long official season more accurately reflects a team’s true strength—it’s worth noting that before the unified baseball league system in 2007, there was no climax series, and the champions of the two leagues directly played in the Japan Series.

The journeys of the four teams that could not enter the climax series end here; the SoftBank First Team will take a brief break after some adjustments, with players resting before starting their winter training.

For the players of the SoftBank Team, who entered the playoffs, they are actually busier now: the last game against the Ham Team was on October 5th, and in less than a week, on October 12th, the first round of the climax series is set to begin. The players of the SoftBank First Team are actively and tensely preparing, while the coaching staff is pondering the player assignments for the climax series.

Arrangements for others are straightforward, simply ranking based on strength; however, for Lin Guanglai, Akiyama Koji faces a dilemma:

Unlike the long, stable official games with ample room for error and even allowing strategic forfeits of individual matches, the climax series is a whole different scenario—every game, every at-bat, even every pitch is crucial. A small mistake might cost the entire season’s efforts.

Therefore, under the climax series format, all tactics and decisions need to be based on winning the most games at the least cost.

During the official games, Akiyama Koji could use his "Pseudo-Two Swords Style" method allowing Lin Guanglai a day off before and after his starting rotation to recuperate; however, such arrangements are clearly unworkable in the climax series:

The best-of-three against Seibu must be completed in three days, and if progressing to the second round against Rakuten, they would face six consecutive away games.

The climax series pitching rotation generally follows the "5-day interval" principle, and more extremely, even a "3-day interval" might be used—yet Lin Guanglai also has batting duties, and using him in this way would mean the SoftBank Team loses a crucial powerhouse in the batting lineup, which is clearly a disadvantage.

Considering all, Akiyama Koji eventually made his decision: without considering the series against Rakuten for now, at least in the best-of-three against Seibu, he plans to prioritize deploying Lin Guanglai as a batter.

After all, most of the short-term best-two-out-of-three series still rely on batting line explosiveness to decide the outcome. If Lin Guanglai is added to the starting lineup, then the SoftBank Team essentially has five players with a single-season batting average over .280, each hitting 15 or more home runs—such an advantage is undoubtedly enough for them to take the lead in the series.

If the team can resolve the matches against Seibu in just two games and advance to the next round, Lin Guanglai can then serve as the starting lineup’s mainstay in the next series and even gain more rest time; and if after the first two games, the SoftBank Hawks and Seibu Lions are tied 1-1, then having Lin Guanglai start pitching in the do-or-die third game would add another layer of security for the team.

Having temporarily solved the rotation-related issues, Akiyama Koji was in high spirits, humming a tune as he called Mr. Oishi, who was in charge of leading the players’ training.

"Mr. Oishi, the training should almost be over by now, right? Yes, could you please ask Guanglai to come to my office? I have some matters regarding the climax series arrangement that I need to explain to him..."