WC:
Read the above title.....that's nothing to be proud of. After starting the WC 5-1, the Taiwanese NT fell flat on its face with 4 consecutive losses to finish in 8th place at the WC. Taiwan lost its final game on Sunday, 6-4 to Mexico in a rematch of earlier pool play.
Box Score/V.O.D./Recap
The coach's decision to start 18 year old Chih-Lung Huang was baffling (even though it was Huang's turn to start in the pitching rotation). Despite his excellent track record against kids his own age, Huang was clearly over-matched (11.37 ERA) in the competition. It was also good to see Chih-Hsien Chiang FINALLY get a start at 2B. CPBL veteran 2B Chao-Hang Cheng's anemic bat (.150 BA) didn't help the team's offensive woes. What was supposed to be the strength of the NT (the offensive lineup) going into the competition, faltered badly down the home stretch. The team ended up hitting .259 collectively (10th out of 16 teams in the tourney). The pitching staff, which was glaringly thin on premium talent, actually held its own with a 3.54 team ERA (8th best in the tourney). For more team stats go here.
In other WC news, the US defeated Cuba 6-3 to win the WC and snap the Cuban's stranglehold on the event that dates back to 1984! Congrats to the US!
Final Standings of the 2007 WC (1-8):
1)US
2)Cuba
3)Japan
4)Netherlands
5)South Korea
6)Australia
7)Mexico
8)Taiwan
Olympic Qualifiers:
Coach Kuo announced his 30 man roster for the upcoming event.
Pitchers (11):
1)En-Yu Lin
2)Ying-Chieh Lin
3)Ming-Chieh Hsu
4)Yu-Chieh Shen
5)Fu-Te Ni
6)Po-Hsuan Keng
7)Sung-Wei Tseng
8)Chien-Fu Yang
9)Yu-Cheng Liao
10)Chin-Hui Tsao
11)Kevin Huang
Catchers (4):
1)Chun-Chang Yeh
2)Feng-Min Chen
3)Kun-Sheng Lin
4)Chih-Kang Kao
Infielders (8):
1)Chia-Hsien Hsieh
2)Kuo-Ching Kao
3)Chih-Sheng Lin
4)Chin-Lung Hu
5)Chung-Shou Yang
6)Sen Yang
7)Chao-Hsing Cheng
8)Tai-Shan Chang *Edited
Outfielders (7):
1)Cheng-Min Peng
2)Chin-Feng Chen
3)Kuo-Hui Lo
4)Chien-Ming Chang
5)Wu-Hsiung Pan
6)Fu-Hao Liu
7)Lien-Hung Chen
Coach Kuo cut all of the amateur players except for C Kun-Sheng Lin (storied amateur - star of 2001 Pony World Series team), little used 2B Chih-Hsien Chiang, added 6 President Lions and a few other CPBL veterans, as well as Chin-Hui Tsao to the roster. (Compare to the WC roster)
8 comments:
hm this roster doesn't seem much better than the world cup one; especially the pitchers, they'll really have to outperform if we want to win the asian qualifiers. It seems like we'll have a better chance of qualifying at the final qualifying tournament next year.
why would he cut Chih-Hsien Chiang, he did pretty good in the small number of at bats he got. by the way TTT, do you happen to know the official explanation on why Wei-Chu Lin and yung chi chen aren't playing?
Also, is the NT going to be playing any practice matches prior to the asian qualifiers?
oh yeah and lo kuo hui has a pretty good arm
i guess this means Tai-Shan was cut as well
My mistake - Tarzan was accidentally omitted.
As for Chiang, I guess coach was looking for more experience - and a better glove at that position.
Lin and Chen's absences are both due to injury reasons - one possibly needing surgery (Lin) and the other just rounding back into shape (Chen) - although he still has some pain at times.
ah i see, thanks for the clarification
only if we can put wang and kuo against japan and korea T_T
man i dont get why they kept lin ying chieh. he obviously does not have what he used to have.
a fastball in the mid 130's is really not enough in such a competitive contest.
CT needs to look more at domestic cpbl pitching. at least they dont have pitch count limitations like keng and tseng.
While YC Lin is a shell of his former self, there just aren't that many quality lefties in the CPBL (Yu-Wei Hsu was on the preliminary NT roster).
Aside from HC Kuo, I can't think of a top-shelf (CH Cheng, WY Chen, and TK Chiu have a ways to go) lefty that has come out of Taiwan in the past decade.
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