Fubon Guardians manager Yeh Chun-chang has resigned just three weeks into the start of the second half of the Chinese Professional Baseball League season, with the club naming farm team manager Chen Nien-hung as his replacement.
Yeh quitting during the campaign is not considered a surprise, since it was well known that the Guardians had been underperforming despite their star-studded lineup due to player dissent and feuding between different cliques.
Although considered the joint favorites to win the title at the start of the season, the Guardians have fared badly, slumping to third place with 27 wins and 33 losses, 11 wins behind league leaders the Lamigo Monkeys at the end of the first half of the season which ended in June.
They began the second half in even worse form, suffering six losses in their past seven games to fall to the bottom of the table.
Yeh confirmed the reports of internal strife and feuding, telling reporters: “I offered to resign in the first half of the season last year.”
“This team won the title in 2016, but at the start of last season I found that there were problems; things were going wrong with the atmosphere in the squad,” Yeh said. “I made sure to oversee the entire spring training and team preparations this year, but the atmosphere did not change.”
“Maybe the team needs a new manager to lead it in a different way, to improve for the better, and maybe the players will have a different attitude and the atmosphere will change,” Yeh added.
Pundits have blamed the infighting on the squad’s “US returnee” clique, headed by Lin Che-hsuan (formerly of the Boston Red Sox) and Kao Kuo-hui (formerly of the Seattle Mariners), as well as others who have played in the US.
They have been feuding with a group of mostly native Taiwanese players, while the club’s best hitter, star first baseman Lin “One Punch” Yi-chuan, has been marginalized by both cliques.
Reports have quoted insiders as saying that Yeh was disappointed when the team owners did not give him the required support, as Yeh has since last year been trying to reorganize the team and demote players who were bullying their teammates.
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