Here is another edition of the CPBL weekly debrief (15/April/2018). Covering the basic overall graphical standings, run differential and the attendance record.

We normally cover the basic stats and advance stats leaders from each categories too, but since it is still early in the season, we will skip it this time.


CPBL Play Of The Week

Before jumping into all the stats and charts, here is a the CPBL play of the week. The Fubon Guardians’ 高孝儀 (Kao Hsiao-Yi) tracks a deep fly to the wall and leaps to make an outstanding catch to rob a 2-run home run!


Graphical Standings

With a five-game winning streak, the Lamigo Monkeys are currently leading the league with 12 wins and 4 losses. As a team, they are hitting .327/.384/.503 with a team ERA of 4.48 and a 1.50 WHIP over 16 games.

Both the Fubon Guardians and the Uni-Lions are tied for second place in the standings with 8 wins and 8 losses. The Guardians are hitting .276/.346/.400 with a team ERA of 5.18 ERA and 1.32 WHIP. While the Uni-Lions pretty much have the identical team stats with .276/.328/.431 along with a team ERA of 5.03 and 1.38 WHIP.

Things are not so rosy for the Chinatrust Brothers, as their pitching staff and fielders continue to struggle. The team currently slashing a .279/.336/.412 with 6.23 ERA and 1.67 WHIP.

Run Differential

  • Lamigo Monkeys – Last 10 – 8W-0D-2L
  • Fubon Guardians – Last 10 – 6W-0D-4L
  • Uni-Lions – Last 10 – 4W-0D-6L
  • Chinatrust Brothers – Last 10 – 2W-0D-8L


Average Attendance

  • Lamigo Monkeys – 8973 – 8 Games
    • Weekday – 6712– 4 Games
    • Weekend – 11234 – 4Games
  • Fubon Guardians – 7776 – 7 Games
    • Weekday – 7998 – 5 Games
    • Weekend – 7221 – 2 Games
  • Chinatrust Brothers – 5351 – 8 Games
    • Weekday – 4929 – 4 Games
    • Weekend – 5774 – 4 Games
  • Uni-Lions – 4795 – 9 Games
    • Weekday – 3671 – 4 Games
    • Weekend – 5694 – 5 Games
  • CPBL – 6631 – 32 Games
    • Weekday – 5955 – 17 Games
    • Weekend – 7396 – 15 Games

Total Attendance

  • Lamigo Monkeys – 71782 – 8 Games
  • Fubon Guardians – 54432 – 7 Games
  • Chinatrust Brothers – 42811 – 8 Games
  • Uni-Lions – 43154 – 9 Games
  • CPBL total – 212179 – 32 Games

6 COMMENTS

  1. The Mexican League started play a couple of weeks ago, and looking at the stats for the first time this season, I see that one of my favorites Josh Lowey is still pitching. He didn’t pitch this past winter, which made me wonder if he had decided to retire.

    Not pitching this winter may have cost him an opportunity to play in the CPBL for (probably) more money than he is making in the Mexican League. This is Lowey’s fifth season in the Mexican League and he plays for a wealthy team (Monclova) which is probably cheating on the league’s salary cap.

    Lowey has great strike out stuff for this level, and while he didn’t pitch well in half a season in the KBO in 2016, he struck out more than 10 batters per nine innings pitched, which suggests he’d be hard for CPBL hitters to handle. Lowey is 33 this year, so he’d be 34 next year if a CPBL team were interested next off-season.

    A Mexican League pitcher for CPBL fans to keep an eye on might be Mitch Lambson. He pitched well in relief in the MLB minors in 2014 and 2015, but a bad year in 2016 had him pitching in the Independent-A American Association in 2017. He’s pitching in the Mexican League in 2018 and has a 1.72 ERA after five starts.

    Lambson will be only 28 in 2019, which would be a reason for a CPBL to be interested if Lambson can prove his strong start in the Mexican League this year is for real.

    • Uni-Lions’ Ryan Verdugo isn’t doing that well at the moment. 7.80 ERA, 1.87 WHIP and 15 innings over 3 starts. Maybe he will be the first one to let go by the CPBL team. Lions’ Japanese backup LHP Chinen Kohya is doing pretty well in the farm team, fastball can hit about 148kph now.

  2. What is the story with Liao Chien-Fu? While it’s only been 17 games, for a 19 year old to be leading the CPBL in hitting is pretty amazing.

    I saw that you predicted he would be the first player selected in the 2017 CPBL Draft because he was reported by scouts to be playing at another level from compared to other players his age, and he was in fact the first player drafted. Any reason why he didn’t sign with an NPB or MLB team? At a listed 5’10” and 187 lbs, he’s a little small for a catcher by MLB standards, but not especially so for a player his age.

    • Liao is one of the finest high school prospect last year. I think give it a few years in professional guys like him will get “thicker and stronger too” an example would be Brothers’ Chen Tzu-Hao.

      The reason he didn’t sign with oversea team is probably was not happy about the signing bonus, it is also worth mentioning, CPBL teams these days can fork out pretty decent money for early round draft pick.

      According to my source, the NPB’s Orix Buffaloes scouts were at the CPBL game a few weeks ago, apart from Wang Po-Jung, Liao Chien-Fu is also on their watch list.

      In a way, we are already seeing a trend of young positional players actually prefer to stay in Taiwan instead of going oversea. I mean, they can still go oversea if they want, the rule is they are eligible for international FA after 3 years in the CPBL.

  3. Liao will still be very young after three CPBL seasons, and the CPBL is probably a good league for a player of his talents to start. Presumably, he will be more comfortable and play better staying at home in Taiwan at the start of his professional career.

    I believe you reported Liao received a signing bonus of about $182,000 from Lamigo. I’m surprised that no NPB or MLB team thought he was worth a signing bonus of $350,000 or $400,000, which would be hard to turn down in comparison.

    MLB teams probably have a preference for Taiwanese pitching prospects, based on the fact that Taiwanese pitchers have a history of more success in MLB than Taiwanese hitting prospects. Also, MLB teams need to sign a lot of pitching prospects, because so many get hurt before they ever reach the majors. Still, it seems like a mistake that no MLB or NPB team was willing to offer Liao a signing bonus big enough to sign him out of high school.

    Again, with Liao only being 22 when he’ll be a free agent, he may get a big signing bonus then, if he continues to play as well in the CPBL as the early indications suggest he can. It would certainly be good for the CPBL if they can hold onto more of Taiwan’s best high school players like Liao.

    • Yeah, you are correct on this. NPB and MLB prefer to sign Taiwanese pitchers. I guess with pitchers, the mentally is you want to get them while their arms are still fresh, so there is an incentive of grabbing them as soon as possible and develop them within your organisation.

      Also from my understanding, a lot of positional players these day actually prefer to stay in Taiwan rather than going oversea, as life isn’t that easy playing in the minor league and it is a lot tougher to make it to the show as a positional player.

      There is also the staying close to home and near your family factor, imagine a kid fresh out of high school and leaving everything they know behind to play baseball at the other side of the world. Don’t speak a word of English or Japanese.

      But again, if you are Lin Tzu-Wei who received over 2 millions USD signing bonus from the Red Sox. Then that’s another story, I’m sure most of them will go if the cheque is that big.

      ——————————–

      While we are on the topic of high school prospect that turned pro and their projections. I’m still working on this new blog post. But I might as well talk a bit about here.

      Shen Hao-Wei – #1 Draft Pick 2016 by the Guardians. I think he will make the first team squad in 2019 or 2020 as the core player. Huge defensive range and will hit a lot of doubles and triples with an occasional pops here and there (Probably 10 or so HR a season).

      Chen Hu – #1 Draft Pick 2016 by the Brothers. While I am projecting him to be in the rotation in 2019 or 2020. but apparently he will make his starting debut in the first team this week, we’ll see how he goes, I don’t think he is first team ready as a starter though.

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