The official website of the Dodgers has reported that the team has cut several bullpen candidates.
Kuo was NOT one of them. Yea!!!! 2 of Kuo's primary competitors: left handed relievers Kelly Wunsch and Tim Hamulack were either reassigned or optioned to AAA. Kuo is almost a lock to make the team, as he is the only LHP among his penmates.
Should Kuo make the team, he would join Wang of the Yanks as a ML regular. If Tsao can make a full recovery, then we might see all 3 in the Majors come June/July. Can't wait!
3 comments:
Awesome news. I've always thought that Kuo has the best stuff of all Taiwanese pitchers in the US. Hopefully his shoulder holds up this time.
What is a concern is the pitching gap between the pitchers in the US major/high minor leagues and the rest of the Taiwanese pitchers. My impression while watching the WBC is that Taiwanese pitchers in general lose their focus if a batter draws out a long at-bat. It also is appearant that most Taiwanese pitchers pitched well early in the count but lacked a "punch-out" pitch. There is no easy solution as most Taiwanese players don't face a high competition calibur day-in and day-out in the CPBL.
Just my two cents.
The only real star pitching talent in the CPBL is En-Yu Lin. The younger Lin is a better pitcher than his former teammate who is now in Japan.
Amateur Sung-Wei Tseng has potential, based on his age and 90 mph fastball.
All the other guys: Yang, Chu, Tsai, etc. are nice players, but there's a reason why they're playing in Taiwan and not overseas.
The best CPBL pitchers usually get a shot to play in Japan. From that perspective, it almost seems as if the CPBL serves as a farm system for the NPB. It's only a matter of time, before Lin is playing in Japan.
I'm slightly ambivalent about the foreign player rule in CPBL. From what I understand each team now carries a reduced number of foreign born players compared to last year (per the new rule). While this gives the Taiwanese pitchers game experience as they have no choice but to pitch, it reduces the number of good hitting foreign batters, thus dropping the level of hitting these pitchers face on a daily basis.
A solution may be to designate foreign player spots to position players. This may increase the quality of hitting and still give Taiwanese pitchers the pitching experience they need.
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