Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 608 - 152: For Victory, For the Championship!

Time flies, and as September comes around, the 2016 Nippon Professional Baseball regular season is entering its closing stage.

Looking at the current standings, this year's Central League champion seems almost certain.

The Yakult Swallows, who sparked an offensive frenzy in the Central League last season with a powerful and explosive batting lineup and eventually climbed to the top, have reverted to their previous form this new season: Team core Yamada Tetsuro's stats remain impressively splendid, but when his teammates are all experiencing a slump, his exceptional skill alone cannot hold up the team — it's hard to believe that this year's bottom-ranked team is the same one that won the Central League last season.

And the ruler of this year's Central League is neither the familiar dominant team Yomiuri Giants nor the Kansai powerhouse Hanshin Tigers, but a team that has been in Class B for years, and hasn't seen the climax battle for ages—

Hiroshima Toyo Carp, this perennial underdog which has retreated from official battles for eight of the past ten years, with its best finish being third place in the league, has undergone a remarkable rebirth this season, currently leading by 12 games with only 10 wins left to secure the championship, truly shocking everyone.

During the offseason, when their top star and 2010 Eiji Sawamura Award winner Maeda Kenta chose to exercise overseas FA rights and eventually signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Hiroshima Toyo Carp was universally considered the bottom first pick in the experts' minds; at least 9 out of 10 experts believed they were not competitive. Even after they signed the returning Hiroki Kuroda from an American stint, this perception persisted.

No one expected that before the 2016 season began, Hiroshima Toyo Carp would simultaneously excel in both pitching and batting, slapping all those who doubted them in the face: Since defeating the Yomiuri Giants in early May to lead the Central League, they haven't relinquished the top spot, continuously expanding the gap in wins.

In terms of pitching, the lineup led by foreign pitcher Kris Johnson maintains extremely strong suppression power, and local pitcher Yusuke Nomura is currently the Central League's wins leader and highest winning percentage pitcher.

However, compared to pitching, Hiroshima Toyo Carp's success relies even more on the performance of their batting lineup, which consists entirely of players drafted and nurtured by the team and has unleashed unprecedented firepower this season:

The batting lineup comprised of Takahiro Arai, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Suzuki Seiya, Yoshihiro Maru, and Kosuke Tanaka combined has blasted over 100 home runs, their formidable firepower certainly counts as top-notch in history.

Judging by the competitive state of this team, it seems inevitable that Hiroshima Toyo Carp will clinch the championship for the first time in 25 years unless a major injury crisis emerges.

In contrast to the determined situation of the Central League, the scenario in the Pacific League feels quite unpredictable: At least for the players and fans of the SoftBank team, the past two months haven't been pleasant times.

By the end of June, when the interleague matches were over, SoftBank, who had won the interleague title 3 times in 4 years, was leading the second-ranked Chiba Lotte by 8.5 games, with the winning gap even once reaching 11.5 games, bigger than the same period last year when they dominated Japan;

While the fans in the Kyushu Region were already preparing to welcome their team's three-peat in Pacific League regular matches, the team's overall status nosedived dramatically over the following two months.

Before July started, SoftBank boasted a 48-win, 19-loss, 5-draw record, a staggering winning percentage of 71.6%, winning consecutive matches with a terrifying state, making the three-peat seem within reach; however, after entering the summer season, they achieved only 11 wins and 11 losses in July, further slipping to 11 wins and 14 losses in August, even enduring a 4-game losing streak in early July and a 6-game losing streak in mid-August.

During this process, the large winning gap built in early-season is being gradually eroded by competitors: As of now, although the team still holds the top position in the Pacific League, the lead is down to just 0.5 games, with each loss risking losing their top spot held since the end of February—considering the recent godly state of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, such a scenario could truly unfold at the end of the season.

If the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters actually manage to come from behind and snatch the Pacific League title, SoftBank would become the third team after 1980 to lead throughout but miss out on the championship at the end. (Note: There were 21 similar cases before 1980, but the stark disparity in strength during those times excludes them from consideration.)

In the supervisory office at Yahoo Dome, 53-year-old Kodama Komei is staring at the statistics spread across the desk in front of him, involuntarily frowning.

As the supervisor of the SoftBank team and the main person responsible for wins and losses, Kodama Komei has been under huge pressure recently—last season under his leadership, SoftBank claimed both the league title and Japan's Number One with an almost unbeatable edge. His in-game captaincy garnered praise from many experts, but what followed was a massive wave of pressure.

As an ancient saying goes, conquering a country is easy, but defending it is tough; for SoftBank, which aims for a tri-successful legacy, this rings even truer: As a team monopolizing championship honors, they will inevitably face targeted opposition from other teams, with even league underdogs inclined to abstain from competition against others just to go all-out against SoftBank—this is why, after Seibu Lions accomplished both league title and Japan's Number One three-peats in the early 1990s, no team completed this feat in the subsequent two decades.