My ranking of baseball leagues around the world based on talent and developed the league is.

Some notes

These rankings are a mixture of the league talent and also how developed the league is.

Factors I take into consideration on how developed a league is
- How much do they pay players to play?
- Do they have nice / modern stadiums?
- Does this league get good attendance?
- What factors could come into play when a player is decided if they should play in the league?
- Do the games for his league have quality broadcast?

1. MLB 🇺🇸
   
2. NPB 🇯🇵
   
3. KBO 🇰🇷
   
4. LMB 🇲🇽 (Summer league)
   
5. LIGA ARCO 🇲🇽 (Winter league)
   
6. LIDOM 🇩🇴
   
7. CPBL 🇹🇼
   
8. LVBP 🇻🇪
   
9. LBPRC 🇵🇷
   
10. APBN 🇳🇮
    
11. LPB 🇨🇴
    
12. LPBP 🇵🇦
    
13. ABL 🇦🇺

Notes on each ranking

🇺🇸🇯🇵🇰🇷 - These are easily the top leagues. Big salaries, high attendance, nice stadiums. This are leagues all baseball players want to play in.

🇲🇽🇲🇽🇩🇴🇹🇼🇻🇪🇵🇷 - These are all quality leagues that have good pay. LMB going at number 4 due to have the best balance of them all. LMB has a long season allowing for higher pay. There are nice stadiums in the LMB, and a high quality of play. LIDOM has the highest talent in this group of leagues but the quality of stadiums really hold the league back over all. CPBL has the highest pay in the group and arguable the nicest stadiums. They lose out on only have 6 teams in the league and the quality of players in the league. I am not saying the quality of player is bad but would be beaten out by other leagues.

🇳🇮🇨🇴🇵🇦🇦🇺 - These are what I would consider minor winter leagues. Money can definitely be made in these leagues but do not compare to the other leagues. In each of these countries there is at least 1 nice ballpark but they don’t have multiple like the group above.

What would you guys change and why?

The Barcelona Qualifier for the 2027 Premier12 has now concluded after three very well-played days of action. Two more European countries will join the Netherlands in Asia next year, while the Zhongshan (China) Qualifier will add the final two teams next month.

Preview: https://www.mister-baseball.com/premier12-barcelona-qualifier-preview/
Day 1: https://www.mister-baseball.com/premier12-barcelona-qualifier-day-1/
Day 2: https://www.mister-baseball.com/premier12-barcelona-qualifier-spain-advance-on-day-2/
Day 3: https://www.mister-baseball.com/premier12-barcelona-qualifier-italy-claims-second-spot-on-day-3/

I put together a reference list of every name every Japanese professional baseball club has used. That covers the major leagues from 1936 to now, the 1947 Kokumin League, NPB farm teams, the clubs in the farm leagues that have no NPB parent, and every independent league. It's current as of October 2026.

How to read it

• Each club's rows run in date order. The bold name in the first column is the club's current name, or its final name if it no longer exists.
• "1947–" means the name is still in use.
• When a name changed mid-season, both names show that year.
• † means the name rests on a single source, or the sources disagree.
• 軍 is romanized as "-gun". English names follow each club's own spelling (BayStars, SoftBank, BlueWave).
• The farm section lists only farm teams that used a name of their own. In every other year a farm team simply carried its parent's name.

I checked everything against Japanese Wikipedia (each club's list of past names), NPB's official site, league sites and 2025–26 news. Corrections with sources are welcome.

Part 1: Major leagues

League names

Central League (current clubs)

Pacific League (current clubs)

Defunct major-league clubs

Part 2: The 1947 Kokumin League

A rival professional league that lasted one year. It played a summer season (30 games) and an autumn season (21 games).

Part 3: Farm leagues

The leagues

The 2026 Farm League has three divisions:

• East: Rakuten, Nippon-Ham, Lotte, Yakult, Oisix Niigata.
• Central: Seibu, Giants, DeNA, Hayate, Chunichi.
• West: Hanshin, Orix, Hiroshima, SoftBank.

From 1955 to 2025, the only club to switch between the Eastern and Western Leagues was Nishitetsu/Seibu, which moved from Western to Eastern in 1979.

Farm-team names that differed from the parent club's

These clubs' farm teams never had a name of their own: SoftBank (Nankai, Daiei), Rakuten, Kintetsu, Shochiku and Nishi-Nippon. No third or fourth team has ever had its own name. The farm names used during 1956–60, while the Eastern League was suspended, aren't recorded anywhere I could find.

Joint teams that were never league members

Farm-league clubs with no NPB parent

Part 4: Independent leagues

National umbrella body

Members joined in this order: Shikoku and BC (2014), Kyushu Asia (2021), Hokkaido Frontier (2022), Nihonkai (2023), Kansai (2025).

If a club played in more than one league, it appears once, under the league where it spent the most time. The Notes column records its moves.

Shikoku Island League plus (2005–)

Kyushu Asia League (2021–)

Kansai Independent League, first league (2009–2013)

Kansai league, second league (2014–)

Japan Future Baseball League (2010)

BC League (2007–)

Nihonkai Ocean League → Bayside League (2022–2023)

Nihonkai League (2023–)

Hokkaido Baseball League (2020–)

Hokkaido Frontier League (2022–)

Clubs that never joined a league

Appendices

1969 Global League. A one-season international league run from Caracas. Its Japanese club, the Tokyo Dragons (東京ドラゴンズ), played abroad.

Japan Women's Baseball League (2010–2021). Included for completeness.

Main sources: Japanese Wikipedia (each club's article and its farm-team article; イースタン・リーグ, ウエスタン・リーグ, ファーム・リーグ, 新日本リーグ, 国民野球連盟, and each independent league's article), NPB's official news releases, the official sites of the national independent-league body and the Kansai league, and the Kobe Shimbun's 2017 article on the Sanyo Crowns.

Still unknown: farm-team names for 1956–60; exact dates for most 1950s farm renames and the 1947 Kokumin League renames; whether Saga Asia Dreams becomes a full Kyushu Asia League member in 2027.

Sup y'all! I tried out something new by making a shorter video doing a breakdown of the P12 Qualifier in Barcelona. Cutting it a bit close no thanks to Colombia's refusal to release their roster until like two days before the event, but oh well. Check it out here on YouTube if you please and let me know what you think is gonna happen in this qualifier!

Hi everyone! I’m Birdie, a US-based solo indie developer making Baseball RPS, a mobile baseball card game built around rock-paper-scissors at-bats.

I’m looking to connect with adult amateur or recreational baseball leagues outside the US, including Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Australia, and Europe. I’d love to explore featuring real players’ photos and names on cards, with the appropriate permissions for use in a commercial game.

In return, I could include information about the participating league and a link so people can discover it. I thought it could be a fun way for a small indie game and local baseball communities to support each other.

Do you run a league that might be interested, or know one worth contacting? I’d be happy to learn about its process and requirements. Featured players would be aged 18+.

Gameplay videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BaseballRPS

Public iOS beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/w6Zc9wCs

Edit: I can work with any countries! I added the countries listed as they normally have dedicated sub reddit! Please feel free to apply!

All six games will be available free on the WBSC YouTube channel in most territories, with DAZN, RAI Sport, Viva Nicaragua and GameTime providing additional coverage.

Two winless teams. One of them had to leave with a win.
Episode 4 goes to week 4 of Uganda's Central League, where St. Peters Nsambya (SPENSA) and Ashinaga met at the bottom of the table, both still looking for their first win of the season.

Ashinaga is run by an offshoot of a Japanese non-profit: 79 players, 53 of them Ashinaga Uganda students, video sessions on Mondays and Tuesdays and on-field training the rest of the week. SPENSA began as a day school founded in 1907 and is now run by the Kampala Archdiocese, in a part of Kampala that is also home to Uganda's oldest football club. Both clubs came into the day winless. One of them also produced the best defensive play we have filmed all season: a diving tag at the plate that came within inches of a triple play.

Since this game, the regular season has finished — and the club you watch here ended up in the playoffs.

A Rednote user reported that the MLB China Development Center (DC) was closed in August and that all of its personnel were laid off. Although this has not yet been officially announced, several anonymous DC graduates on Rednote have echoed the claim that the center was closed. The DC’s official accounts on Bilibili, Rednote, Weibo, and Douyin have also been deleted or have stopped updating.

Recently, a Rednote account called Jinmu Baseball Development Center (金木棒球发展中心) has started posting videos of daily training sessions at the same facility in Wuxi that was previously used by MLB DC. The facility is operated by Jinmu Sports Science and Technology Development Corp. (金木体育科技发展有限公司). According to publicly available corporate information, Raymond Chang is listed as the company’s legal representative. He previously served as the head of MLB China DC.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that MLB has withdrawn from operating the DC, with former staff taking over its operations on their own.

shoutout to jeff duda, frilled shark, shawn spradling, international baseball, and everyone who supports baseball as a global game

Curious what kind of MLB live package comes with such, no ad commercials just stadium views, heard it kind of international feeds?

With the WBC allowing players to qualify through parents, grandparents, or deep citizenship laws (like GB’s colonial born parent eligibility), how do these federations actually find their guys? The US player pool is massive.

Does anyone know the actual logistics of "heritage scouting"? Are they literally just filtering MLB and minor league rosters for specific last names, or are agents doing the legwork to get their clients international exposure?

I know in soccer there are many scouts sent across the world for it, but I would think the nations where baseball isn’t huge wouldn’t have as many resources to do that ground work for them. I just wanna know how teams basically get connected to eligible players

For me the most noticeable fall is Cuba followed by PR. Venezuela has fallen a bit. Mexico has improved, as well as Panama after our 2000 decline. I think Japan is the country that has improved the most.

They've been underperforming in adult tournaments for more than a decade now, i guess you can use defections as an excuse, which is true tbh. But recently in the u15 wc, they lose by 10 runs to japan and rd, i mean there's no way the top 14 year olds have already defected right? Will they ever be able to produce top talents again?

This pitching prospect from Korea had 15.2 innings pitched without giving a run and getting 25 strike outs against Japan.. WOW