At the nominal halfway point of the Japanese baseball season, COVID-19 — not Munetaka Murakami or any other star who will be on display during this week’s All-Star Series — is taking center stage.

The seventh wave of infections in Japan is taking a toll on the NPB ranks, sidelining various players and staff members — not even Hokkaido Nippon Ham’s Big Boss, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, was immune — and decimating the Yomiuri Giants.

Even with the shadow of positive tests hanging over the league, there will be an All-Star Series, provided NPB can cobble together enough players to compete. Nine withdrew due to the virus on Friday.

Despite NPB’s efforts, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc — and the impact will resonate for the rest of the season.

No team was hit harder than the Giants, who reported 76 positives across the organization over a five-day period last week. There are big names on that list, including ace Tomoyuki Sugano, slugger Kazuma Okamoto and manager Tatsunori Hara.

The situation is so dire that NPB postponed the Giants’ planned three-game series against the Chunichi Dragons in Nagoya this past weekend. That led to complaints from fans of other teams, who saw their clubs play on despite missing players and coaches who had tested positive. In reality, the league really had no choice as the Kyojin probably could not field a complete team.

Yomiuri, though, is hardly the only team to have issues.

The Tokyo Yakult Swallows had 14 people test positive earlier in the month, including infielder Tetsuto Yamada and manager Shingo Takatsu and postponed a game against the Hanshin Tigers. The team later played games without those players and with an interim manager. The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks canceled games against the Chiba Lotte Marines in June after 14 positive tests. The Fighters had 11 positives earlier in July, though the team did not postpone any games.

The DeNA BayStars reported three new cases on Saturday.

NPB teams are already taking precautions at their home stadiums and have COVID-19 guidelines to follow on the road. There are measures in place for everyone in uniform and for others such as trainers, groundskeepers, ball girls and boys and security staffers.

The reality is that even with precautions, it is impossible to predict when infections will occur.

So it’s easy to see the pennant and playoff races being shaped, in part, by COVID-19.

That’s already happening, with some teams competing with players in isolation. The games before the All-Star break may not have the tangible pressure of late-season contests, but they all count the same at the end of the year, and players being forced to sit has an impact.

Hence some of the anger over the Giants being allowed to postpone games. Instead of playing without the players who tested positive, Yomiuri may have those players back by the time the games are played. The team will also likely have injured captain Hayato Sakamoto, who would have missed the Dragons series, back on the field.

There is not much, however, NPB can do short of pausing the season. The possibility players will miss key games or that another team will have an outbreak will always loom over the rest of the season.

Plus, If the COVID-19 situation worsens and there are more postponements, and Japan has a rainy summer, NPB’s schedule makers will really have a problem. The end of a normal NPB season is already a messy amalgamation of makeup games due to rain, and more games called off due to COVID-19 would only add to the existing headaches.

All 143 games have to be played, and unless NPB suddenly starts playing doubleheaders, some teams may have extra fatigue and stretched-out bullpens to deal with late in the year.

That, however, is as much of a part of the new normal as everything else these days. The pennant race in the PL is incredibly tight, and so is the race for the last two Central League Climax Series places.

It’s just unfortunate that it seems inevitable COVID-19 — either through what has already happened or something down the road — will have a role in determining how it all shakes out.