Those of you who are interested in watch professional baseball in Taiwan. The 2016 Taiwanese baseball season is upon us again.
Here’s some of the highlight from last year’s playoff
Taiwan Series Game 7 No hitter
Ways to watch CPBL games this season (Paid service or Free online streaming)
TV
- FOX Sports (Lamigo and Lions Home Games)
- VL Sports (Brothers and Rhinos Home Games)
- ELTA Sports (All teams)
- FTV Four Season (Lamigo Home Games)
Online
- CPBL.TV (Paid service, including VOD and archive)
- Lamigo.TV (Free – Only available during the game)
- Lions.TV (Free – Only available during the game)
- Brothers.TV (Taiwan residents only – Free – Only available during the game)
- Rhinos.TV (TBA – estimate end of April)
- (Will update this list later on)
Quick fun facts for this season:
- Chinatrust Brothers acquired several major free-agents during the off-season from Lamigo Monkeys and EDA Rhinos. Including CPBL 2015 MVP Lin Chih-Sheng who put up an impressive 30/30 stats last season.
- Lamigo’s Chen Chin-Feng, an extremely popular player who has been the cleanup batter for the past 10+ years for the Taiwanese national team. Chen has announced 2016 will be his last professional season.
- Lamigo’ rookie Wang Po-Jung who joined the team towards the end of last season puts up 9HR in less than 30 games. Will he be able to keep up his impressive rookie stats?
- EDA Rhinos’ Kao Kuo-Hui who hit 39 homers last year. Will he break the magical #40 this year?
- Chinatrust Brothers veteran and CPBL poster child Peng Cheng-Min managed to achieved 0.300+ AVG and 0.400+ OBP for 15 consecutive seasons. Will he be able to do it again this year and extend the recorder further.
Ex-MLB players playing in Taiwan
Taiwan has been one of the place where ex-MLB players come to extend their professional career. Including some of the high profile names like:
- Manny Ramirez
- Freddy Garcia
- Jose Contreras
Or going back even further with:
- Pascual Perez
- Don August
- Melvin Mora
This season CPBL will have the following well known MLB players
- Felix Pie (Lions)
- Jair Jurrjens (Lions)
Foreign players in Taiwan
The last few years the League’s policy is each team can have up to 3 foreigners per team. The foreign players are mostly from the AAA level with some MLB appearance.
Here’s the complete 2016 foreign players update thread
2016 Schedule
CPBL Brief History/ Structure
Click here for CPBL league structure
Baseball Stadiums in Taiwan
There are currently 18 professional baseball stadiums around the island of Taiwan.
Full listing of all professional stadiums in Taiwan. There’s pictures if you click on it.
Historic Stadium
- Tainan Stadium Built during the Japan Era back in 1930, one of the oldest still active professional stadium. Currently the home for Uni-President Lions. Probably the best stadium to watch if you’re watching TV broadcast, as it has camera mounted on the roof of the stadium, able to see every single play without the safety net blocking the view.
- If you like to look at Lions’ players up close personal. Tainan stadium probably have the best seating zones in the whole league.
- Diamond zone (Only 180 seats) which is along the first baseline.
- The famous “Gold zone (Only 12 seats) it is right behind the home-plate on the ground level. Fans are basically seating on the field.
Newer “Trendy” Stadium
- Taoyuan International Stadium Home for the Lamigo Monkeys, they’re the only team that plays entire 60 home games in one stadium, because of that the team is able to heavily invest hardware into the stadium such as sound system, DJ booth, restaurant area, LED system loops around stadium. Very fan-focused stadium in their marketing strategy. There’s concerts after the game and plenty of special theme events throughout the season. Here’s a video of what going to a game in Taoyuan stadium feels like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCVkVOwJIls
Great environment Stadium
- Hualien Stadium Tiny simple stadium located in East coast Taiwan (Majority of the population living on the West coast) Hualien Stadium is probably the best stadium in Taiwan in terms of the scenery, with Central Mountain Range literally in the background.
