CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #176
Fubon Guardians News: Adalberto Mejía
On May 20, ETtoday broke the news that the Fubon Guardians have signed 27-year-old Dominican left-hander Adalberto Mejía. According to the article, Mejía already arrived in Taiwan in early May and completed his mandatory 14-day quarantine.
Adalberto Mejía began his professional career in 2011 and eventually made his MLB debut in 2016 with the Minnesota Twins. From 2016 to 2019, he also pitched for the Cardinals and the Angels. He posted a career record of 4.62 ERA and 1.56 WHIP over 154 innings in four MLB seasons.
Adalberto Mejía Pitching Repertoire
Based on the data on Baseball Savant, Adalberto Mejía has four pitches in his arsenal.
- 4-Seam Fastball: 93mph (149.7kph), 44%
- Slider: 84.5mph (136kph), 30%
- Changeup: 81.1mph (131kph), 16%
- Sinker: 92mph (148kph), 10%
Adalberto Mejía is quite comfortable at using all his pitches against right-handed batters. He tends to increase his changeup usage and usually kept it down and away.
When facing left-handed batters, he then would dramatically increase his slider usage and once again kept it down and away from the batters. In addition, he hardly ever uses his changeup when facing left-handed batters.
Further Readings
Foreign players come and goes, therefore we compiled a foreign players tracker to keep track of all the foreign players signing for the 2021 CPBL season.
Adalberto Mejia and Dylan Covey look to be an improvement over the foreign players CPBL teams normally sign. Any news on Justin Bour potentially signing with the Wei-Chuan Dragons?
Turns out they were in talks with Danny Espinosa. But after the news was leaked, Espinosa’s LMB team decided to add more money to keep him in Mexico.
Starting with the 2019 season when the Guardians brought in Henry Sosa, CPBL teams have been bringing in a slightly better class of foreign pitchers. 2020 was kind of a breakthrough year, with better foreign pitchers available because of Covid and no baseball in the minor leagues or Mexico.