Focus on your team
Pick a club to highlight its line and dim the others. Press it again to reset. On the balance chart, picking a team also reveals its projected range band.
Games over .500
Balance = wins minus losses. The horizontal zero line is the .500 mark. The ▼ marks along the top of the plot show the days the lead changed hands, colored for the new leader.
To the right of the dotted vertical line is the projected balance range from the pennant simulation (20,000 trials). Pick a team above to show its band (light = 10th-90th percentile, dark = 25th-75th, dashed = median). All probabilities are model estimates and do not guarantee outcomes.
Standings over time
Daily standings ordered by winning percentage (wins over decisions) at the end of each day. Teams tied on percentage share the same rank, so lines can overlap. Official tiebreakers such as head-to-head records are not applied to the daily series.
Win-loss calendar
A tall dark cell is a win, a short light cell a loss, and a thin line a tie - the heights keep the chart readable even without color. Doubleheaders split the day's cell vertically.
Season highlights
Days in first place are counted per day with games played.
What 'games over .500' means
The balance is wins minus losses: a club '10 games over' has ten more wins than losses, while a negative balance is nicknamed 'debt' (shakkin) in Japanese baseball. Each win adds one and each loss subtracts one, which makes momentum swings easier to follow than winning percentage.
Ties count as neither result and leave the balance untouched. But NPB standings are decided by winning percentage with ties excluded from the denominator, so the number of ties still affects the order - which is why the balance order and the standings order can differ.
How to read the charts
Each league chart draws six lines in club colors, with the abbreviation and current balance attached directly to the end of each line. The horizontal zero line marks .500, and the lightly shaded span is the interleague period. Badges on the chart mark the season-high balance and a recent lead change. The small ▼ marks along the top edge record every day the lead changed hands, in the color of the new leader.
Every chart can be saved as an image. The saved image keeps the title, the data date and the source (npbc.media), so a share always carries its own context.
More balance but lower in the table
Because NPB standings run on winning percentage, a club can hold a bigger balance yet sit lower in the table: a team with more ties has fewer decisions in the denominator, so the same balance yields a higher percentage. Down the stretch, the tie count can matter as much as the balance itself.
Frequently asked questions
What do 'savings' and 'debt' mean in Japanese baseball?
They are Japanese baseball idioms for the win-loss balance: 'savings' (chokin) is a positive balance and 'debt' (shakkin) a negative one. Ten games of savings means ten more wins than losses.
How do ties affect the balance?
They do not move it - a tie counts as neither a win nor a loss. But in the winning percentage that decides the standings, ties drop out of the denominator, so a club with more ties posts a higher percentage at the same balance.
Why can the balance order differ from the standings?
Because standings use winning percentage (wins over decisions). A club with more ties has a smaller denominator and posts a higher percentage at the same balance, so a club with a smaller balance can still rank higher.
Where can I see a club's momentum?
The slope of a club's line is its momentum: winning streaks tilt the line upward, losing streaks downward. Together with the season-high badge and the lead-change marks, the recent slope reveals form swings the standings alone hide.
Can I see past seasons' charts?
Yes - the pennant race archive carries balance charts for past seasons (for years with available data). See the link at the bottom of this page.