Eastern League (Japanese baseball) Eastern League (Japanese baseball) The is one of the two minor leagues ("ni-gun") of Japanese professional baseball. The league is owned and managed by the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Teams in the Eastern League generally play an 80-game schedule every year. In 1954 the six teams of NPB's Central League agreed to form their own minor league — the Shin Nippon League (or "New Japan League") — as a complement to the already extant Kansai Farm League, which had begun play in 1952. The minor league affiliates of the Chunichi Dragons and Hanshin Tigers moved over from
Eri Yoshida On December 15, 2009 the Arizona Winter League announced that they had reached an agreement to allow Yoshida to play in their thirty-five game season. The league served to showcase players who had been overlooked by major league teams in the draft by giving them a chance to play in front of professional scouts. On February 12, 2010, Yoshida got her first win in Arizona Winter League play, throwing four shut-out innings in a 5–0 win for her team, the Yuma Scorpions, versus Team Canada of the Arizona Winter League. On February 28, 2010, she was offered a contract to