Taiwan’s national baseball team finalized a 36-player training roster that it would draw on to compete in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) qualifying round in Taipei later this month and began training for the event on Monday.
Of the 36 players, there are 19 pitchers, four catchers, eight infielders, including Taiwan’s star of the 2023 WBC Yu Chang, and five outfielders, while nine of the players compete abroad.
However, only two of the players — catcher Lin Chia-cheng and outfielder Chen Chieh-hsien, were on the team who won the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Premier12 championship in November last year.
Photo: CNA
The roster has to be whittled down to 28 for the Feb. 21 to 25 qualifying round at the Taipei Dome, but regardless of who plays, Taiwan would be heavily favored to advance to next year’s WBC finals.
To advance, Taiwan would have to take one of the top two places in a qualifying group that also includes Nicaragua, Spain and South Africa.
Neither Spain nor South Africa made it to the 2023 WBC finals, and a win by either nation over Taiwan, on a high after their Premier12 win and currently ranked world No. 3 by the WBSC, would be considered a massive upset.
The top 16 of the 20 teams in the 2023 WBC finals automatically qualified for next year’s edition of the top global baseball tournament that usually draws many of the game’s top stars.
Taiwan have to qualify because they finished last in their 2023 WBC group by virtue of tiebreakers after all five teams had a 2-2 record.
Of the nine players on the training roster who play overseas, eight are pitchers, including Zhuang Chen Zhong-ao, Sun Yi-lei, Lin Sheng-en and Sha Tzu-chen, while Cheng Tsung-che is an infielder.
Lin Sheng-en, 19, who plays in the Cincinnati Reds organization, was the only overseas player who reported for Monday’s training session, while the others are expected to report in between Monday and Friday next week, team manager Tseng Hao-jiu said.
Lin Chia-cheng, 27, is currently a free agent and in the US trying to negotiate a new contract and might not be available for the WBC qualifiers, CPBL president Tsai Chi-chang said.
Yu Chang was not able to play in the Premier12 tournament due to injury, but he said he is in good physical condition and would be ready for the games later this month.
Taiwan are to train for the WBC qualifiers at the Taipei Dome until Thursday next week and then at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium from Friday next week to Feb. 17.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
Erling Haaland on Sunday scored twice to propel Manchester City up to second in the English Premier League with a 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth. The Cherries started the day in second thanks to the longest unbeaten run in the English top flight, but Andoni Iraola’s side were undone by the scintillating form of the Norwegian striker, who took his tally to 13 Premier League goals in 10 games. Haaland’s relentless streak is maintaining City’s title challenge as they reduced the gap to leaders Arsenal back to six points and edged one point ahead of Liverpool, who they face at the weekend. “Important
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
RSS