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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Konami Cup - Asia Series 2005

Three of the four league champions have been decided.
NPB champs - Chiba Lotte Marines
KBO champs - Samsung Lions
CBA champs - Beijing Tigers
The CPBL will crown a champion in a clash between the Macoto Cobras and the Sinon Bulls.

Personally, I don't really follow professional baseball in Taiwan, but the Cobras would probably fare better against Asian competition because it has better starting pitching with rookie stud En-Yu Lin, star lefty Ying-Chieh Lin, and starter Chu-Jien Hsu.

The obvious favorite has to be the Lotte Marines, followed by the Lions, and then the eventual CPBL champs.

The official site of the Konami Cup can be found here.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey. it's me again. It's pretty hard to follow CPBL unless you either can read chinese, or actually watch the games.

anyways, macoto is probably the strongest team in taiwan right now. They have two of the best starters in taiwan. the bad thing is their offense has taken a blow because their two foreign players arent in the team anymore. but that hasnt made that big of a difference so far. :D

Anonymous said...

Is the Konami cup something new the last few years? Seems like it's the champion of the 4 countries to play against one another to determine which is the best after 3 regular game and eventually championship game (serie)?

I can read Chinese characters, and it seems like Cobras got a good coach, or manager you call it in the US in Tai-Yuan Kuo, who is Taiwanese and had a stellar career in Japan.

TTT said...

Sup guys.
This is the first year that the league champions from Asia are playing one another. I think it's a good step towards internationalizing the game.

Wouldn't it be sweet if in the future, we saw the NY Yankees face the Yomiuri Giants in a best of 7 true World Series?

If Macoto were to make it to the finals against the Lotte Marines, they wouldn't be able to match the offensive firepower that the Marines have. Losing Encarnacion and Veras hurts a lot. Hsieh, although still productive, is not a spring chicken anymore.

TTT said...

Frank,
BTW, I like what you've done with your site. The individual players page that includes the player's baseball card is a cool idea. Props man!

Anonymous said...

Yea Hsieh by himself isn't enough.

but now it's still kind of okay because they've kinda shifted to a more conservative offensive. instead of hitting homers, the team's focus is on getting on base and hitting singles.

Kuo Tai-Yuan used to pitch in Japan for the, Seibu lions i think. he was known as Taigen kaku there. when he was playing professionally, he could pitch up to 156km.

Anonymous said...

found your site from taiwanese ball player's discussion forum... cool blog. thanks for the info and the links... anyone knows what kanomi means?

Anonymous said...

well it's the name of the video game company. they're into the recreational business now so this is their big event.

i dunno what the name actually means though.

Anonymous said...

TTT - Thanks man, took a bunch of time and personal thoughts on the players, but it was worth it. Probably not going to update too much during off-season unless some new player get signed out of Japan (Matsuzaka, Jojima). I might buy a baseball template for the site.

Mao - You live in Japan? I think Taigen Kaku was known as the Big 3 along with Yasuaki Taiho, and Genji Kaku Those 3 Taiwanese players made a name for themselves in the NPB during the 80s. Kaku and Hideki Irabu used to be the Asian pitcher who threw fastest, until Tsao broke it when he reached the Majors 2 years ago.

Anonymous said...

i live in taiwan.