NPB Tracker

NPB Interleague Play wraps up over the weekend, and Nippon Ham will need to win both of it’s games against Hanshin to have a shot at winning the Interleague title*. Yu Darvish has offered to pitch in relief over the weekend if it will give his team a chance to win. Darvish last pitched on June 17, throwing 128 pitches over seven innings in the Fighters’ 8-7 win. He allowed three earned runs while striking out nine and walking four.

Hopefully Nippon Ham manager Nashida sees the bigger picture and doesn’t burn out his ace pitcher over a game that ultimately doesn’t hold any special meaning.

Source: Sanspo (in Japanese)

*In Japan, Interleague games are sorted of treated as a separate championship within the season. Each team’s results still factor in to their normal won-lost records, but they also keep separate standings for Interleague games, and the team with the best record is considered the champion. The Interleague Championship doesn’t have any playoff implications and isn’t a big deal at the end of the day. The Interleague contenders are:

Going into the final Interleague weekend, Hanshin plays Nippon Ham and Softbank plays Yomiuri. So despite the Interleague games not being worth any more in the standings than any other game, making it a little more of a competition does at a bit of intrigue.