Less than a month after the Los Angeles Dodgers made Chen Chin-feng (
Terms were not disclosed but Seattle Pacific Rim scout Jamey Storvick said Wu received a signing bonus, incentives and college scholarship money.
Wu, 18, is the second position player in the past three years to head to the US to play professionally. Taiwan has also exported five pitchers to the US.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PHILIP GLAMANN
Storvick said he thought seeing Chen make the Dodgers roster in September might have convinced Wu he had a realistic shot at making the big leagues in the US.
"The fact that he saw a kid go over there and make it might have done it," Storvick said. "It was something I think maybe he and his parents discussed."
Wu, who graduated from San-Ming High School (三民高中) in Kaohsiung and attends Fu Jen Catholic University (輔仁大學) in Hsinchuang, will head to the Mariners minor league spring training in March near Phoenix, Arizona. Storvick said it was likely Wu would then stay in Arizona and play for a Mariners rookie team.
"Sizewise he compares to the American kids," Storvick said of the 190cm Wu. "He is strong and we think he will just get stronger."
Besides changing cultures, Wu will also be changing positions. A first baseman in high school, the Mariners intend to transform Wu, who bats lefthanded and throws right, into a catcher. Since most catchers bat righthanded, finding one who bats from the other side of the plate could make Wu a valuable commodity for the Mariners.
"We have basically taken him as a catcher," Storvick said. "What he doesn't know about the position we can teach him. It could give him a better shot."
A change in positions didn't seem to bother Wu at the AAA World Junior Baseball Championships held in August in Canada. When the Taiwan team's starting catcher went down with an injury, Wu took over and helped the team to a second-place finish. He hit .419 (13 for 31) and hit four home runs in the tournament, including one in the championship game, which Taiwan lost to Cuba 9-6.
Wu, who speaks little English, will be assisted by a full-time translator from Taiwan, Sam Kao, who spent last season in the US minor leagues with Wang Chao, the first mainland Chinese player to play in the US.
Wu will spend this offseason in Taiwan studying at Fu Ren and working with a catching coach to learn his new position.
"Other guys have had problems with being able to adjust but one thing about Wu is he is pretty intelligent," Storvick said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier