NPB (Japanese baseball) - what's up with the Central League?

[junglehusky]

Pacific League dominated the C-League in interleague play (a more recent introduction to NPB than MLB) again this year.

Central League clubs currently wallowing in mediocrity
by Jason Coskrey

There’s a decent chance that at some time this week no Central League team will have a winning record.

Heading into Tuesday’s games there’s only one, the Yomiuri Giants, and they’re teetering on the brink at 35-34. Meanwhile, the Hanshin Tigers are 33-33; the Yokohama BayStars are three games under .500 at 32-35-1 and riding a 12-game losing streak; the Chunichi Dragons are 32-36-1; the Hiroshima Carp are 30-35; and the 30-36-1 Tokyo Yakult Swallows bring up the rear.

It hasn’t been a banner year so far, to say the least.

The Giants, nominally the best team in the league, have a .507 winning percentage that would be good enough for only fifth place, right behind the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (.517), in fifth place if the Kyojin were in the Pacific League.

No team in the CL has looked great for much of this season. The result of six mediocre teams playing, well, badly most of the time, is a logjam where the clubs are separated by 3½ games from top to bottom.

I hope the Carp can turn it around so they're playing better when I go to Japan this August. Ahh who am I kidding, they're probably going to miss the playoffs...