Professional baseball is played all around the world, though the sport is most popular in dense clusters of countries in several distinct regions. Known as “America’s game,” the most prestigious league is located in North America, where Major League Baseball boasts 29 franchises in the United States and one in Canada.
However, you’ll find many of the professional athletes who make up MLB rosters come from the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba are all baseball powerhouses and responsible for developing much of the talent at the highest levels of the game. South America makes substantial contributions to the sport as well, especially Venezuela.
Then, you have several top-tier professional baseball leagues in Asia. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are all major hubs for the game. Each country is home to elite domestic teams while also regularly sending their best players to Major League Baseball.
In this post, I’ll be giving a brief overview of the most important leagues around the globe. This information can be vital to our readers, who are betting on baseball for a couple of reasons.
For one, it’s always a good idea to be familiar with the hot new prospects entering the MLB. That knowledge will give you a jump on the public on baseball futures bets. Secondly, many of these professional leagues can be wagered on at various online sportsbooks. They present an opportunity to bet on baseball during the MLB offseason.
In the realm of professional baseball, the MLB is the top of the tier. The North American league boasts the biggest slate of teams, best athletes, and highest salaries by far. With 29 franchises in the USA and another in Toronto, Canada, Major League Baseball’s 30 organizations are divided into two unique groups—The American League and National League.
That said, legally speaking since 2000, the National and American Leagues have been consolidated into a single entity, Major League Baseball. They’re now treated more like separate conferences than leagues. However, there’s one major difference between the AL and NL, the designated hitter rule. In the National League, pitchers take at-bats, while they’re replaced by a designated hitter in the American League.
This slight rule change has substantial tactical implications. It especially impacts how teams approach making substitutions and using their bullpens. During interleague play and the World Series, whichever team is home plays by their league’s rules.
Each of the two leagues consists of three divisions, made up of five teams apiece. At the conclusion of the 162-game regular season, the club with the best record in each division receives an automatic berth to the playoffs. Two more non-division-winning squads with the highest winning percentages also qualify for the postseason via wild card spots.
Players report to spring training in mid-February, which is worth paying attention to if you’re betting on baseball. But the Major League Baseball season doesn’t officially begin until early April. The regular season then lasts through the summer, with the playoffs starting in October and the World Series coming to an end in early November.
The Mexican Baseball League is home to 16 franchises and the oldest professional league running in the country. It’s a Triple-A class league, just one step below Major League Baseball; however, none of the clubs are affiliated with any MLB organizations.
Called “Liga Mexicana de Béisbol,” or “LMB” for short, Mexico’s largest league is divided into two divisions: North and South. The regular season is 120 games long. Clubs play most days of the week, facing opponents in a three-game series. They’re often lumped together in multiple-series homestands and road trips. They compete against each divisional opponent nine times per year, while they play all eight teams in their rival division only six times.
The Mexican Baseball League’s season runs almost parallel to the MLB year, despite being slightly shorter. Regular season play opens in late March or early April and continues through the end of August. The clubs with the four best records in each division advance to the playoffs.
Two additional teams may potentially qualify as Wild Card selections, but only if they’re within three wins of the fourth-place squad. If so, the fourth and fifth-place clubs compete in a one-game Wild Card elimination game. The winners advance to a five-game showdown in the first official round of the postseason. The divisional championships and Serie del Rey, the LMB’s “World Series,” are both best-of-seven series.
No team in the Mexican Baseball League has enjoyed as much success as the Diablos Rojos del Mexico. They lead the league with 16 total championships and 22 divisional titles. The Generales de Durango have experienced the opposite, as the only club in the LMB without a championship in their history.
Nippon Professional Baseball is the premier league in Japan. Much like how the MLB used to be organized, the NPB is made up of two individual six-team leagues, the Central and the Pacific. The Pacific League employs designated hitters, while the Central does not.
Among scouts and MLB front office employees, Nippon Professional Baseball is considered a “Quadruple-A” league. While that’s not technically a real classification, it’s widely accepted that the skill level of the NPB is higher than Triple-A but a notch lower than Major League Baseball. However, it should be noted that there are several significant differences between baseball in Japan and in the United States.
While the basic rules of the game are the same, in Japan, the field and strike zone are all smaller, as are the balls, which are wound tighter. There’s also a limit to the number of extra innings allowed, meaning it’s possible for contests to end in a tie. The regular season is played over a 146-game regular season, with games played every day from Tuesday through Sunday.
Masanori Murakami became the first player from Nippon Professional Baseball to sign with an MLB club in 1964, but the flow of talent from Japan to Major League Baseball really picked up after Hideo Nomo signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers after making a name for himself pitching for the Kintetsu Buffaloes. Since Nomo, we’ve seen roughly 60 Japanese players signed to MLB franchises, most notably, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Hideki Matsui, and Ichiro Suzuki.
The “Yankees” of Nippon Professional Baseball are the Yomiuri Giants. The Giants are far-and-away the most successful franchise in Japan, with 22 championships, nine more than the second-winningest club.
South Korea is another hub of top-tier professional baseball. The sport is believed to have been introduced to the country by American missionaries in 1905 and thrived under Japanese rule. Today, the KBO League, which was founded in 1982, is the highest level of the game played in the nation. It’s also the most popular professional sports league in South Korea.
Much of the sport’s current popularity in South Korea can be traced back to 1994 when Chan Ho Park was signed to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The one-time All-Star (2001) currently holds the record for the most wins by an Asian pitcher, with 124 victories acquired over the course of 16 years in the MLB.
Park’s immense success is responsible for opening the pipeline from South Korea to Major League Baseball. Since his joining the league, players like Byung-Hyun Kim, Bong Jung-Keun, Hee-Seop Choi, Hyun-jin Ryu, and Jung-ho Kang, and Shin-Soo Choo have been given contracts to play for MLB franchises.
Since 2015, the KBO League’s regular season has consisted of 144 games, the same year a 10th franchise, the KT Wiz, were added to the league. Each club plays every other team a total of 16 times throughout the season.
The KBO League follows several rules that are different from Major League Baseball. For example, when there are no baserunners, the pitcher only has 12 seconds to throw the ball. All clubs use a designated hitter instead of having pitchers take at-bats, and only two foreign players are allowed on each roster. Additionally, games in South Korea may end in a tie, as there are limits to the number of innings allowed, capped at 12 during the regular season and 15 in the playoffs.
<
The Mexican Pacific League is an independent winter league comprised of 10 franchises. It was established in 1945 and is classified as Triple-A professional baseball. The league’s season takes place between the months of October and January.
Unlike the larger Mexican League, the LMP (Liga Mexicana del Pacífico) sends their champion to represent the league in the Caribbean Series, the most prestigious competition in Latin American professional baseball each year.
On nine separate occasions, a club from the Mexican Pacific League has gone on to win the entire tournament. Most recently, Venados de Mazatlan took the Caribbean Series championship in 2016.
Starting in 2019-20, the Sultanes de Monterrey will be participating in the Mexican Pacific League as well as the Mexican League, where they’ve won 10 championships in the past. The most successful franchise in LMP history is Naranjeros de Hermosillo, with its 16 league championships and two Caribbean Series tournament wins. Tomateros de Culiacán has been the second most successful with 11 titles and two Caribbean Series championships of their own.
The Liga Venezolana de Béisbol Profesional (“Venezuelan Professional Baseball League”) is an eight-team professional league and the highest level of the sport found in Venezuela. It was founded in 1945, four years after the game exploded as a favorite pastime in the country. The surge in popularity followed the nation’s amateur team winning the 1941 world championship tournament, which was played in Havana, Cuba.
Talented athletes from the United States and the Caribbean quickly flocked to the South American country to compete, where the sport was already integrated. Many Hall of Fame players from the US’s Negro leagues and other Latin American leagues traveled south, including Satchel Paige, Ramón Bragaña, Martín Dihigo, Bertrum Hunter, Roy Campanella, Sam Jethroe, and Roy Welmaker.
All eight LVBP franchises compete in a single division, facing each of the other clubs nine times per year. The 63-game regular season is essentially a round-robin tournament, with the top six teams having the best records advancing to the playoffs.
The first round of the postseason consists of three seven-game series: the first-place club from the regular season versus the sixth, the second against the fifth, and the third vs. the fourth. Three teams advance to the second round, while a fourth is decided with a wild card game between the two highest-ranked clubs that lost in the previous round.
Finally, the last two remaining squads meet in the championship series. Whichever club wins the title in a given year represents the league in the annual Caribbean Series. A franchise from the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League has won the Latin American tournament on seven different occasions. The most recent Caribbean Series championship came in 2008-09 via the Tigres de Aragua.
The Italian Baseball League is the most prestigious professional league in all of Europe, where the sport is not particularly popular. Nevertheless, the eight-club IBL was founded in 1948 and has been in operation ever since.
An IBL regular season consists of 42 contests, with each team playing two separate three-game series against each opponent, one at home and one away. Like the MLB, the Italian league uses wood bats exclusively, banning aluminum and composites.
Of the eight clubs, the four with the best overall records qualify for the playoffs each year. In the postseason, each of the remaining teams competes against each other once in a round-robin tournament. The two squads with the most playoff win then meet in a seven-game championship series.
During its long history, the Italian Baseball League has sent three players to Major League Baseball: Jason Simontacchi, Chuck Carr, and Robel Garcia.
The Australian Baseball League is another professional winter league that serves as a training ground for many English-speaking minor league prospects. It was founded relatively recently, in 2009, but didn’t debut until the 2010-11 campaign.
The season runs from November through February, with clubs playing 40 total games over the course of 10 four-contest rounds or series. Each team competes against their division mates eight times per year and the opponents in the other division in four games apiece.
Following the regular season, the three top-ranked teams advance to the postseason. Two additional clubs are granted Wild Card berths. The fourth and fifth-placed squads compete in a single-elimination contest to determine who will play the number-one seeded team. The remaining four clubs face off in three-game semi-finals series.
The championship, which is played for the Claxton Cup, is a best-of-three series as well. The two organizations tied for the most ABL titles are the Perth Heat and Brisbane Bandits, with four cups each.
Whichever franchise wins, the Australian Baseball League goes on to represent the league in the Asia Series, where they’ll compete against the top clubs from Nippon Professional Baseball, the KBO League, and China Baseball League.
The Dominican Republic’s professional winter league, or “Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana,” was founded in 1951 and is the highest level at which the sport is played on the island nation. It consists of only six franchises with rosters that feature a litany of MLB prospects and veterans alike. As such, LIDOM serves as a crucial training ground and talent pipeline for Major League organizations.
The season opens in mid-October and lasts through the end of January when the champion is decided. Each of the six clubs plays a 50-game regular season in which they face each of the other teams 10 times apiece. The four squads with best records advance to the postseason, which sees them play each of the remaining opponents six more times.
After those 18 contests, the top two teams advance to a best-of-nine championship series. Both the league winner and runner-up advance to the Caribbean Series, where Dominican clubs have experienced the most success of any participating nations. LIDOM’s winningest franchise, the Tigres del Licey, has won 24 league titles along with 10 Caribbean Series victories.
Puerto Rico is another goldmine of professional baseball talent. The most prominent league on the Caribbean Island is the Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente (LBPRC) or “Puerto Rico Baseball League.” It was founded over 80 years ago, in 1938, and has played a role in the development of numerous MLB Hall of Fame players over the decades.
Clubs from the Puerto Rico Baseball League have won the second-most Caribbean Series championships with 16, only three fewer than the Dominican Republic teams. The LBPRC’s Cangrejeros de Santurce has won the Latin American tournament five times, going undefeated twice in 1953 and 2000. The same franchise took the most recent league title, their 15th in history.
The athletes who have competed in the Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente are some of the most influential players of all time. Not only did the league’s namesake, Roberto Clemente, participate, but superstars like Willie Mays, Roberto Alomar, Carlos Delgado, Pedro Martinez, Carlos Baerga, Bernie Williams, Juan González, Hector Villanueva and more have played in Puerto Rico’s top-tier league as well.
The Colombia Professional Baseball League is a four-team winter league played between October and January, at the start of the MLB offseason each year. The league was established in 1948 and is currently owned by a foundation created by Edgar Renteria.
In 2004, the LCBP was accepted in the Caribbean Confederation of Professional Baseball. However, the league will not be sending a representative to the Caribbean Series until the overall level of play is raised enough to compete with the other participating countries. The expectation is that they’ll send a representative for the first time in 2020.
Until recently, the league consisted of six teams, but it was recently lowered to only four. The regular season is played in a round-robin, with the two franchises with the best records competing in a league championship series.
For fans of betting on baseball, it’s nice to know there are professional leagues all around the world, supplying high-level competitions throughout the year. The most elite place to play is in North America, for one of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises. But you’ll find plenty of future stars playing in the various Caribbean and Asian leagues scattered around the globe.
Numerous Latin American superstars first developed their skills in the top-tier leagues in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Venezuela. The leagues in Japan and Korea are larger and more organized, but they send fewer athletes to Major League Baseball. However, these more prominent Asian competitions are more likely to be found at the best baseball betting sites.
Whether you’re an enormous fan of baseball or just want to maximize your knowledge base for betting reasons, it’s worth your time to pay attention to the many different leagues around the globe. Besides potentially being allowed to wager on the games themselves, these competitions will show you the future stars of the MLB before they’re called up. Veterans also use the winter leagues to work on their craft, which may help you to identify candidates for significant improvements in the upcoming year.
You’ll also find regional tournaments like the Caribbean and Asia Series, which pit the top clubs from various professional leagues against each other. These will present additional baseball betting opportunities on extremely competitive matchups.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
