Most of the coaches picked for Taiwan’s 2026 World Baseball Classic (WBC) team were part of the coaching staff that guided the team to victory in the Premier12 tournament last year, manager Tseng Hao-jiu said on Monday.
Tseng announced coaches selected during a meeting of the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taipei, and said they would almost all be familiar faces.
Among them are Kao Chih-kang, named as the bench coach, Wang Chien-ming and Lin Yueh-ping, named as pitching coaches, and Peng Cheng-min and Kao Kuo-hui, named as hitting coaches, Tseng said.
Photo: CNA
All of them expressed their willingness to work for the national team again and bring home the best results, said Tseng, who was also the manager of the Premier12 title team.
An 80-man list of players, who all play professionally at home or abroad, was also confirmed at the meeting, Tseng said, adding that he would closely monitor their performances before starting to contact them in December about joining the team for the WBC.
The WBC tournament was first held in 2006 and was the first international tournament to feature the top professional players from around the world.
Having finished last due to tiebreakers in a five-team pool in which all five teams finished 2-2 in the 2023 WBC, Taiwan had to qualify to make it into next year’s WBC.
They barely made it, defeating Spain 6-3 in a final elimination game in February.
They are to play their first game on March 5 against Australia at Tokyo Dome in Japan.
They are to play against Australia, South Korea and Czechia in Pool C of the tournament along with three-time champions and defending champions Japan.
Only the top two teams in round-robin play in the pool would advance to the tournament’s quarter-finals in the US.
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