OK. I’ve been through a pair of Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast prediction shows, the first of which dropped last week regarding the PL, and the second, on the CL is to come out Monday, but time to do the necessary research in time for the shows is tight, and it’s hard to do as much as one would like.

I’m not a fan of predictions, because there are hundreds of things we can’t possibly know about a season even when it’s in progress, and to try and pick the winners in advance is little more than a fool’s errand. But here I go.

I basically looked for indicators of future success, based on what NPB teams have done in the past, and try and apply that to the teams from 2021 and see how they stack up.

Here’s how I did it:

Start with the number of wins and ties from last season and then look for historic changes to those figures in the following seasons based on:

• 1. The team’s finish. This is the BIG one.
• 2. How much better the team’s results were over the final third of the season than in the season overall.
• 3. How much better or worse was the team’s record than its ratio of runs scored to runs allowed – its Pythagorean win percentage would predict.
• 4. The average age of its run producers.

Finish

Teams that do well in one season tend to decline the next. This follows the law of competitive balance, where teams that do well tend to stick with what worked, while teams that do poorly tend to aggressively seek solutions.

From 1946 to 2020 (in terms of the current 143 season) here’s how many games teams gained or dropped on average based on their finish the previous year:

1. minus 7.4 games
2. – 4.6
3. – 1.1
4. + 0.4
5. + 3.6
6. + 7.7

Late edge

I have more work to do on this to smooth out the data, but essentially teams that do better over the final third of the season than they did the first four months, tend to improve slightly, with the exception that those teams that really went into the toilet, tend to get a boost of about two games. This is likely related to teams seeking changes after late collapses. Most of the other modifiers are tiny, like a quarter of a win.

Wins and Pythagorean projections

Teams that win more games than their runs scored and allowed suggest tend to decline the following season, while those that have a relatively poor record relative to their runs scored and runs allowed tend to improve.

As far as this season’s predictions go, the SoftBank Hawks have reason to be optimists. Teams that missed their Pythagorean projections by around nine wins – as the Hawks did – improved by about 2.4 wins the following season. Teams that overshot their projections by around six games, as the Hanshin Tigers did in 2021, have historically declined by 2.9 wins the following year.

The age of the offense

Four teams, the Swallows, Tigers, BayStars, and Fighters can expect to gain less than a win because of the age of their offenses in 2021. The Carp had Japan’s youngest offense, but teams that are super young like the Carp tend not to improve suddenly the next year. The Dragons, Hawks and Giants are the teams that father time will likely be the least kind to in 2022, losing around one more game apiece.

With those calculations modifying the teams’ win totals from 2021, my basic CL and PL projections are as follows. Each team gets a single score in wins. Teams will tie, which will mess it up, but predicting pennant races is dumb enough without trying to think about ties. The thing about this system is that it doesn’t project huge jumps or collapses, so the league projections are all bunched up, so be it.

Central League

1. Yakult Swallows 78
2. Hanshin Tigers 75
3. Hiroshima Carp 70
4. Yomiuri Giants 70
5. DeNA BayStars 70
6. Chunichi Dragons 66

Pacific League

1. SoftBank Hawks 73
2. Rakuten Eagles 73
3. Orix Buffaloes 72
4. Seibu Lions 72
5. Nippon Ham Fighters 70
6. Lotte Marines 69

In retrospect

I actually picked the Marines to finish first on our PL prediction show with the Hawks second and so on. The Marines had an old lineup in 2021, overshot their Pythagorean projection, and finished well. They didn’t add any particular new talent, although Roki Sasaki could be hugely more valuable this season.

These predictions don’t discuss the elephant in the room, the teams that lost and gained big talent. My CL podcast predictions, strangely enough, were exactly as they are above. Both the Tigers and Carp have huge young talent pools, but I was probably overoptimistic about the timing of Hiroshima’s school of young fish, but they are getting there.

Losers and gainers

The problem with that while we know what teams are giving up and getting based on last season, we don’t know where the new untapped big talent is going to come from.

The big losers were in order of total 2021 win contributions as measured by Bill James’ Win Shares:

1. Hanshin Tigers: Robert Suarez and Jerry Sands, each contributed more than five wins to the Tigers coffers in 2021.
2. Hiroshima Carp: Seiya Suzuki was worth about 10 wins to the Hiroshima Carp last season.
3. Nippon Ham Fighters: Haruki Nishikawa is the big ticket there, although he was in the decline phase of his career so that is probably going to sting a little less.
4. SoftBank Hawks: Nick Martinez was worth more than four wins to SoftBank last year, but the free agent acquisition of Katsuki Matayoshi from Chunichi adds a quality reliever worth about four wins in 2021, for a journeyman, Sho Iwasaki.

Losing the big guy

One could ask how many fewer games teams won the next season after a player contributing in the area of 10 wins—a solid MVP-caliber season—leaves. I identified 11 of these guys. Neither Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka nor Kazuo Matsui made that very high cut line. They were:

• Pitcher Takahiko Bessho leaving the 1948 Hawks for the Giants in 1949
• Pitcher Masaichi Kaneda leaving the 1964 Swallows for the Giants in 1965
• First baseman Hiromitsu Ochiai leaving the 1986 Orions for the Dragons in 1987
• Outfielder Tomoaki Kanemoto leaving the 2001 Carp for the Tigers in 2002
• Outfielder Hideki Matsui leaving the 2002 Giants for the Yankees in 2003
• First baseman Roberto Petagine leaving the 2002 Swallows for the Giants in 2003
• Outfielder Kosuke Fukudome leaving the 2006 Dragons for the Cubs in 2007
• Third baseman Michihiro Ogasawara leaving the 2006 Fighters for the Giants in 2007
• Outfielder Yoshihiro Maru leaving the 2018 Hiroshima Carp for the Giants in 2019
• Outfielder Seiya Suzuki leaving the 2021 Carp for the Cubs in 2022

We don’t know how the Carp are going to do, but if the past is any help, not well. The 10 teams losing MVP caliber stars lost an average of 6.4 games more the following season. The Dragons, of course, won the Japan Series in 2007 against the Ogasawara-less Fighters, but the only one of the 10 teams to do better in the win column was the 2003 Yakult Swallows.

The following teams dropped an average of 6.4 wins per 143-game season.