It has been confirmed that the Boston Red Sox have signed D.J. Yeh, a LHP for around an $80,000 US dollar signing bonus (bonus amount unconfirmed). Yeh became a controversial figure in Taiwan, when it became apparent that this year's CPBL #3 draft pick decided that he wanted to give the US minors a shot despite making himself available for the CPBL draft. Yeh became a hot commodity upon his return to baseball after a 4 year lay off from the game. Yeh, who had been scouted by several ML organizations in his HS days, was throwing around 92 MPH in his prime. Although recently his fastball has been clocked in the mid to high 80's range, the time off can only benefit Yeh and hopefully help avoid the arm problems that many Taiwanese pitchers have faced.
Several young HS baseball players in Taiwan are currently being scouted by several ML organizations during Taiwan's current HS national tourney. Led by the Red Sox, Braves, and Dodgers and their strong international scouting program, three kids have caught the eyes of these scouts. They are:
1)Tzu-Kai Chiu - LHP: DOB: 9/14/87 Stands 6'0 tall, weighs close to 200 pounds. Throws around 89 to 90 mph max. This kid has been on the youth national team scene for a while now. In 2003, he led Taiwan to the gold by beating both South Korea and Japan in the Asian Youth Championships. At the time, the Colorado Rockies were pursuing Chiu pretty heavily after establishing the Tsao and Lo pitching pipeline. Chiu was also on the 2003 World Youth Baseball Championship silver medal winning team. Chiu started the title game against the US, but took the loss in that game. Chiu then represented Chinese Taipei at the abbreviated 2004 World Junior Baseball Championships where he went 1-1 (W/L), had a 0.00 ERA and K'd 4 in 2.1 IP.
2) Hung-Chen Lai - another LHP: Mentioned in an earlier post - see the Nov. 25, 2005 post, the kid is an undersized (5'9") athlete, who projects to be a pitcher at the next level. Lai also throws close to 90 mph max. The Red Sox are interested in the kid, but will probably wait until he physically matures - which might mean he will have to play some collegiate baseball before he gets his shot over in the US.
3)Chih-Hsien Chiang - IF : Profiled in an earlier blog posting.
2 comments:
well, you can take one taiwanese player off the list. chen signed a deal with the bears according to the taiwanese ball players discussion board. doh!
Yea, I just saw that on etaiwannews.com
Unbelievable.....that's a lot of NT that was thrown Chen's way. But he deserves that kinda money. Heck, Chen Hsin-An got offered more NT initially by ETSN. I wonder how much the bonus incentives are worth? I'm sure that as long as he is injury-free , he'll tear up the CPBL and hit all of his bonus incentives.
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