Lotte Marines win Japan Series

Worth staying up for! Great series. When Shunsuke started holding his shoulder in the 2nd innings I thought Lotte's luck was all over. I thought Saburo should have been MVP.

Weaker Team Won ! Congratulations to CL-PL !

Weaker team won is a ridiculous statement..Congratulations to both sides on a superbly entertaining and gutsy series.Dragons were really gritty and did their fans proud against very,very skillful hitting.

"weaker team won" - what is that crap? Obviously the STRONGER team won, 4 games to 2. Lotte spent most of the first half of the season in first, then won 8 ROAD games in the playoffs. There is nothing weak about any team who wins titles in opponent's stadiums.

I'm a core Lotte fan and I am overcome with joy this morning. After Okada hit his triple I knew there was no defeating the Marines.

"Weaker team won" heh, heh... You seem to have hit a nerve, some14!

Good series I really enjoyed the games this weekend.

Lotte pulled of a good one yesterday. Congrats!

I bet Fuji TV was sweating bullets again when the Dragons tied it up again in the 9th. That was the 2nd night in a row that they used up all of their commercials and from 10 o'clock on, they didn't have any sponsors to break away to.

I started watching from about the 5th inning, just as Kawahara was getting his shellacking. Even Satozaki was getting a piece of him.

Not sure why Wada got charged with an error in the 7th. His throw was on target but it looked like it took an irregular bounce. If anything, the error should have been on the infielder (Ibata? 2nd base?)

Good game. Almost wish I could go see them at Tokyo Dome take on the Korean champion this weekend. Probably going to have to work, though.

I will still route for the Dragons next year, too.

Don't pay much attention to Japan baseball, watch it only from time to time.

But how does a tie work in a playoff series? If Chiba had won game 7, they would have had an 8th game in the series?

Nice series. It is unfortunate that 90% of the Japanese public did not care to watch it. Especially since 2 of the games were not even televised, including cable...

But Lotte did well, they managed to patch together their poor pitching to hold Chunichi just enough and made some very entertaining baseball to watch. With Takashi Ogino returning next season, all they need to do is add perhaps 2 more arms and they should be towars the top for years to come. If closer Kobayashi stays in Japan that is...

But how does a tie work in a playoff series? If Chiba had won game 7, they would have had an 8th game in the series?

I think you mean Chunichi instead of Chiba here.

If Chunichi had won last night, (or even if it had ended in another draw) they would have forced a game 8 in Nagoya.

I have been told but haven't yet confirmed that in game 8, they have to play until somebody wins. No ending in a draw.

thanks for the reply chuckers. that makes more sense.

but if two or three of the games had ended in ties, what then? sounds like they need to go and change the rules. Man, I thought Bud Selig was bad.

@ shogun36...Its a 7-series championship game, so whoever win 4 games will be the champion.

It si not hard to understand, tie games simply don't count and the first to win 4 wins it all. Not rocket science.

Nice series. It is unfortunate that 90% of the Japanese public did not care to watch it. Especially since 2 of the games were not even televised, including cable...

Debucho, that is just not true. Every game was televised, some were not televised over terrestrial broadcasting nationwide, but they were all broadcast. I have every single game recorded!

How can a team that finished in third place in the league be "champions"? What a load of bllocks.

It si not hard to understand, tie games simply don't count and the first to win 4 wins it all. Not rocket science

Debucho - That IS pretty hard to understand. Tie games simply won't count. What a crock. How would you like to have spent 4 and a half hrs at a game, paid good money for seats and transportation, food etc. and then realize it was all for nothing? A classic example of how the dinosaurs in charge of Japanese pro baseball have turned it into a third rate league that has lost popularity to soccer in the past few years.

Lotte is a Korean company. Do they own the team?

Anybody hear talk about Valentine now?

If the games keep getting tied, then they'd have to play well into November. No wonder they have dome stadiums that are passe nowadays. How is it that NPB plays fewer games than MLB yet is scheduled to end in November? How many day-offs do they get?

Many teams that don't finish first in the regular season become hot in the playoffs and become champions. The playoff is basically a second season, a second chance to prove your worth. Happens in any playoff, like the World Cup.

Lotte is a Korean company. Do they own the team?

Yes.

Tie games simply won't count. What a crock. How would you like to have spent 4 and a half hrs at a game, paid good money for seats and transportation, food etc. and then realize it was all for nothing?

Didn't bother me at all to do so, and it was 6 hours, not 4.5.

I have skyperfect TV and I subscribe to the Pro baseball package, and only 3 of the games were on sky perfect.

Smorkian,

I have every single game recorded!

Great, you and the only other guy interested can watch replays forever!

The playoff is basically a second season, a second chance to prove your worth

Problem is, the "second season", lasting just a few days, renders the real season, played over six months, pointless. The world cup's different because the group stages are over in less time than the knock-out rounds.

Anybody hear talk about Valentine now?

If it weren't for Bobby V, Chiba Lotte would'nt have the squad they have now. You can't diss Bobby V, he turned the whole franchise around, business development and all.

How can a team that finished in third place in the league be "champions"? What a load of bllocks.

Exactly. Japanese baseball needs to be split into 3 Divisions with 3 Champions plus the best Wild Card going into the Playoffs. Worst case scenario would be the Wild Card team winning the Series but that would be a pretty decent team who may have a better season record than some of the Divisional Champions.

Still surprised how Seibu died and didn't make it into the Nippon Series. Was looking forwards to the winning sales at the local super. All we got was the plain "Thanks, for cheering sale.".

But good for Lotte to take the title, Dragons can be a tough team to beat.

The regular season is not pointless. First, it separates the top from average or lower, so a team has to be good to even qualify for the "second season" aka playoffs. Second, the top teams with better records get home-field advantage. If a regular season first-place team cannot even beat the other teams in the playoffs, then that team does not deserve to be champion.

The soccer World Cup is like 3 "seasons." The first season is qualifying; the second is the WC group phase; and the third is the playoffs. So a team that barely qualifies to the WC can still win the WC if it gets hot at the right time.

If a regular season first-place team cannot even beat the other teams in the playoffs, then that team does not deserve to be champion.

Completely disagree with that statement. A team (Chiba Lotte) only needs to be hot for a couple of games in a row against its 2 rivals in the League Climax. The season lasts from the end of March until the start of October, which is a totally different achievement to a team only getting hot in October.

As we all know, the Climax Series is just devised to be a TV moneyspinner resulting in a farcial end to the season where the best teams 'over the season' are not getting their achievements recognised.

northlondon,

That's the way it works in the playoffs. Most sports end in the playoff, from baseball to basketball to hockey to soccer, etc. (2002 World Cup: Brazil barely qualified, a whopping 13 pts behind Argentina - Brazil won the WC.) A team wants to be champion? Beat the teams that qualify for playoffs, then there's no questions asked. Even US college (American) football fans want playoffs (there's not one currently, so every year there's always debate on who deserves to be champion). Nobody questions the team that emerges from the playoffs, even US Final Four basketball, where it's one-and-done (lose once, you're out).

Note: in leagues that have a "balanced" schedule (like say many national soccer leagues), then there may not be a need for playoffs, since everybody plays everybody the same # of times, home and away.

northlondon,

Oh, and I wasn't dissing Bobby V - he did lead our local team to the finals once. I was just asking if there's still talk about him.

lost, even in the Major Leagues, the only teams to make it into the playoffs are the 3 Divisional Champions in the National League plus only 1 Wild Card team, and the 3 Divisional Champions in the American League plus their best Wild Card team. Worst case scenario is one of the 2 Wild Card teams winning the World Series, but their season record will probably be better than some of the Division Champions in the playoffs. What you don't get in the Major Leagues is a Chiba Lotte finishing 3rd in the regular season and being given the chance to win the Series.

Probably best not to use the Soccer World Cup as a comparison for fairness in sporting tournament formats, as it is run by some of the biggest crooks in sport and it is a knockout competition, not one that lasts for half a year.

Great, you and the only other guy interested can watch replays forever!

There's no need for that, dude - I was just correcting your factual error.

The NPB post season doesn't need fixing. It's pretty standard in any sport that's not football to have playoffs. The three teams in the Pacific were pretty evenly matched all season (only 2.5 games difference from first to third) - there was a distinct advantage given to the first place team especially and somewhat to the second place team.

Doing without a playoff would be silly. More baseball = good.

Cl teams were all of 1 game in the standings apart (all 3 teams)!!!

Australian NRL and AFL run from March to October and have a Top 8 finals series...so your team can finish 8th and still have a chance to win the Championship..regardless of where you finish if you're not good enough when it counts your seasons down the gurgler.

in the american NHL there are 30 teams & 16 get into the playoffs. same with the NBA. a team coming in last in their division can reach the playoffs if they have a good enough winning percentage . so, in comparison, the japanese league system doesn't look too bad after all. that being said, that free win to the division leader is a bunch of c p !

Like I said, if any sport has a playoff format where a team finishing 3rd (or 8th !!) in the regular season can win a championship, then it runs the risk of the end of the regular season becoming a total waste of time for paying customers. In that case, what is the point in having a regular season ? In English football there are cup knockout tournaments and season championships. Although that is now being meddled with for TV money, with promotion playoffs (absolutely ridiculous, where a team finishing 6th can be promoted over the 3rd place team) and the UEFA Champions League where around 60% of the teams competing are not 'champions' with some of them finishing 4th in their season. Playoffs were devised to increase TV revenue and they distract from the statistic of the best team winning over a season.

Lotte was only out of 3rd place by 2.5 games. 4th place was only 0.5 game behind that.

Most of the teams in the PL this year were fairly well bunched together. Lotte was only really dominated by Softbank this year so did well to get by them. Complaining about Lotte being "3rd" place doesn't mean all that much considering they only had one fewer win that Softbank. Softbank had fewer losses but many more draws which is why they got 1st place. Heck, even Seibu had more wins than Softbank but they got 2nd.

I didnt really care which team won, as long as it wasnt the bloody Giants! I think no one made this point, but the Marines were basically like the SF Giants this year: neither had a great regular season, both barely scraped into the playoffs, both had to knock off "stronger" teams to get to the finals, etc.. AND networks/sponsors probably were not very happy to see them get there!