Lower gram up! Yokohama DeNA won the third Japan No. 1 in team history

If you want to say that the biggest surprise in Japanese baseball in 2024 is definitely the Yokohama DeNA Bay Star, who won this year's Japan Tournament championship. DeNA's regular season performance this year is actually not outstanding, with a record of 71 wins, 69 losses and 3 draws for the year. As of August, the win rate was only 50%, 1.5 games behind the Sakajin Tigers, who finished third in the league at the time, and at the time, according to the statistics company, DeNA had only a 23% chance of making the playoffs.

However, in September, the Hiroshima team, which is at the top of the Central League table, had a big stall that shocked fans, and handed in an astonishing record of 5 wins and 20 defeats in a single month, which also allowed DeNA to take the opportunity to grab the last CS ticket. The immortal DeNA first defeated Sakajin 2:0 in the first round, and then won a crucial victory in the decisive round after being chased 3:3 to snatch the ticket to the Central League Japan Competition. In the next major tournament in Japan, DeNA showed tenacity, winning four consecutive victories from an absolute disadvantage of 0 wins and 2 defeats at home, and won the 2024 Japan Title on a counterattack. This is the third Japan One trophy in team history (including the predecessor), and it is also the lowest winning percentage in the regular season in history Japan One (0.507), the first team in the Central Federation to win Japan One in the league with the third place, and the only team in history that Japan has more times (3 times) than the number of league championships (2 times).

Unprecedented, Shohei Ohtani 50-50

Shohei Ohtani, who switched from the Los Angeles Angels to the Los Angeles Dodgers this year, although he could only serve as a hitter because of his elbow surgery, his performance was still amazing when he switched to the National League. First broke the record for the most home runs in a Japanese career held by Hideki Matsui, and then contributed 43 stolen bases and 43 hits in a single season, and finally completed an unprecedented performance with 54 hits and 59 hits, and also became the first hitter in history to hit 50 hits and 50 thieves in a single season. With Ohtani returning to pitcher next year, Ohtani's performance as a hitter will be more challenging, but there is no doubt that this is still Ohtani's season.

Reiwa monster Ronki Sasaki challenges the Grand League

The biggest news at the end of the season can be said to be the "Reiwa monster" Langxi Sasaki, who has been confirmed to have Rhodes' approval and will challenge the major leagues through the "entry system". Since Ronshi Sasaki has not yet qualified as a free agent, the consent of the parent league is required to challenge the major leagues, and Ronshi Sasaki is not yet 25 years old, in addition to not being able to sign a major league contract, the scope of the signing fee is also limited by the total limit. Despite this, Sasaki still has a strong desire to challenge the major leagues, so the Rhodes team finally agreed to let go, and in order to allow Sasaki to get a higher signing fee, he only made a formal application on December 10, according to the regulations, overseas free agents under the age of 25 can only sign between 1/15 and 12/15, so they must wait until January 15, 2025 to know who Sasaki will be.

The 27-game winning streak in the international tournament was suspended, and the samurai TOP team was defeated by Higashidan

In recent years, the Japanese samurai team has always been invincible in the international arena, and the last time they lost was in the round of 12 in 2019, and Japan has not tasted defeat in the Olympics or classics. Although the process of forming a team this time was not smooth, in addition to Inspector Inobata himself who wanted to make the lineup younger, several main players such as Murakami Munetaka, Kazuma Okamoto, Ito Dami and other players with classic experience became injured before and after the list was announced, which greatly reduced the strength of the team, but its overall strength is still the strongest team in the top 12 of this year. From the preliminaries to the semifinals, there was a wave of 9 consecutive wins, but in the championship match with Chinese Taipei, the Japanese team's line was never able to break through the relay of the Chinese Taipei team's starting Lin Yumin and the bullpen pitcher, and the defense was also broken by Lin Jiazheng and Chen Jiexian's two home runs, and finally lost 0:4 and missed the top 12 matches.