Taiwanese baseball star Yu Chang yesterday announced he would enter this year’s CPBL draft, signaling his intent to play professionally in Taiwan for the first time after a decade in the US.
In a post on Instagram, Chang said it was time to come home after spending much of the past 10 years in the MLB, most recently with the Tampa Bay Rays.
“It’s been ten years working away from home, I miss home very much, therefore I’ve decided to enter the 2024 CPBL draft,” he wrote in English on Instagram. “I really appreciate that the Rays organization has been very understanding and supportive of my decision.”
Photo: CNA
If Chang enters the draft, scheduled for Friday next week, he would likely be chosen by the New Taipei City-based Fubon Guardians, who have the first pick after finishing last in the CPBL last year.
The Guardians said in a statement that they had been in contact with Chang for some time.
Pending the conclusion of the draft and contract arrangements, they “look forward to [Chang] wearing a Fubon Guardians jersey in the second half of the season,” the team said.
Chinese-language sports Web site TSNA reported that the Guardians offered Chang a contract worth about NT$2 million (US$61,734) a month earlier this year.
The infielder initially signed as an international free agent with the then-Cleveland Indians in 2013. In 2016, he was ranked as Cleveland’s sixth-best prospect by Baseball America magazine.
He made his major league debut for the team, now called the Guardians, in 2019.
Two years later, he had the best year of his career, hitting nine home runs and 39 RBIs in 89 games with an on-base plus slugging percentage of .693.
In 2022, he bounced between the majors and minors, playing 69 games in the majors for the Guardians, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox.
However, it was in last year’s World Baseball Classic that he demonstrated his star power playing for Taiwan, with two home runs, eight RBIs, a .438 batting average and several clutch hits in four games.
He signed with the Red Sox after the tournament, but his momentum was quickly squashed on April 25 last year when he sustained a left wrist fracture in a game against the Baltimore Orioles that kept him off the field for months.
He played 22 games after returning to Boston before he was designated for assignment.
The 28-year-old signed with the Rays ahead of this year’s season, playing in 14 games for the team’s Triple A franchise, the Durham Bulls, where he sustained an oblique strain.
At the end of last month, he was again placed on the injury list after colliding with a teammate.
In the Instagram post, Chang said he was playing rehabilitation games in Florida and would be back on the field soon.
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
Cambridge on Saturday made it four wins in a row as they comprehensively defeated Oxford in the 171st University Boat Race on London’s River Thames. It was Cambridge’s seventh win in the past eight years of a rowing race between England’s two oldest universities first staged in 1829. A world-class Cambridge crew were heavy favorites for victory. However, four minutes into the race, the crews came close to a clash of oars which could have caused severe disruption, with Oxford repeatedly warned as both team chased faster conditions in the middle of the river. For the first time in the
RSS