The MLB Tokyo Series has come and gone, spring training is finished, and opening day is right around the corner! Nippon Professional Baseball’s 2025 campaign opens this Friday, March 28, at 6:00 PM local time (5:00 AM EST, 2:00 AM PST).
How to Follow NPB
Looking for ways to follow the league this season? Of course, NPB’s official website contains the schedule, box scores, standings, rosters, and more, though some important things are missing on the English version.
Check out our recently updated guide on overseas streaming options. I recommend The Japan Times, SportsLook, and The Mainichi to stay up to date with major news and stories. Robert Whiting and Jim Allen’s blogs are a must-read for opinion pieces. I also contribute articles about Japanese baseball to the World Baseball Network, and my weekly newsletters here on JapanBall will contain all the essentials.
Game highlights are posted by individual teams or networks on YouTube. The most popular ones include Pacific League TV and NTV (for the Yomiuri Giants). Myself (Yakyu Cosmopolitan), Gaijin Baseball, and Lucas Borja on Twitter/X typically live-tweet exciting highlight clips or game updates as well.
To find stats, Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs are the go-to sources. Their NPB pages aren’t as fleshed out as MLB or even minor league data, but they’re improving. Just type in a name on the search bar to discover their player page. Deltagraphs is essentially the Japanese version of Fangraphs. It requires a ¥1,000 monthly subscription (¥2,000 for Farm), but it’s one of the only publicly available places with full English translations and Sabermetrics.
I also have my own free website for NPB and Farm batting, pitching, and fielding leaderboards that are customizable, sortable, filterable, and will be updated regularly.
Here are my preview videos for each of the 12 NPB teams, plus two podcast episodes predicting the season standings.
Pacific League
Central League
- NPB Standings
- Central League Hitting Leaders
- Central League Pitching Leaders
- Pacific League Hitting Leaders
- Pacific League Pitching Leaders
- Yakyu Cosmopolitan’s Website
