Western League (Japanese baseball) Western 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 Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). Teams in the Western League generally play an 80-game schedule every year. The league was created in 1952 as the Kansai Farm League, and was initially completely separate from the workings of the Nippon Professional Baseball. It featured the minor league teams of the six professional teams that had their homefields in the western region of Japan, as well one independent team not affiliated with an NPB franchise.
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