CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #318
Fubon Guardians News: Brandon Brennan
On January 26, the Fubon Guardians announced the signing of Brandon Brennan. The 32-year-old American right-hander is set to arrive in Taiwan in February.
Brandon Brennan began his professional career with the Chicago White Sox organisation in 2012. He eventually made his MLB debut in 2019 and was active in the big league until 2021 as a member of the Mariners and Red Sox. During those three MLB seasons, he compiled a 4.21 ERA and 1.30 WHIP over 57.2 innings.
In 2022, Brandon Brennan signed a minor league deal with the Braves and was assigned to Triple-A. However, he was let go in midseason after posting a 6.91 ERA over 24 games.
After leaving the MLB system, he continued his professional career in Mexico. In 2023, he logged 97.2 innings with a 3.69 ERA in the Mexican League. Prior to his signing with the Guardians, he was active in the Mexican Winter League, where he posted a 3.68 ERA over 36.2 innings.
According to the scouting report on SoxProspects, Brandon Brennan throws a 4-seam fastball, sinker, changeup and slider. He is primarily a sinkerballer with changeup as his best off-speed pitch.
As of today, the Fubon Guardians have Enderson Franco, Nivaldo Rodríguez and Brandon Brennan as their foreign players for the 2024 CPBL season.
Further Readings
Foreign players come and go. Therefore, we have compiled a tracker to monitor all foreign player signings for the 2024 CPBL season.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing that Fubon seems to agree with me on foreign pitchers who pitched well in the winter leagues and might be good prospects for the CPBL. Fubon hasn’t done a great job of picking foreign pitchers the last couple of years.
Historically speaking, those that performed well in LIDOM will have a pretty high chance of success in the CPBL. It is closely followed by NPB and KBO.
Both the Mexican League and Mexican Winter League are a bit hard to predict. Either they are really good or really bad when coming over to Taiwan.
I will be interested to see if the Guardians bring back Matthew Kent. He doesn’t throw hard enough to dent bread, but he’s got a rubber arm and would not make a bad fourth foreign pitcher as a guy who can eat innings when another foreigner gets hurt or does not pan out.
Matthew Kent is definitely worth to bring back for 2024. But I can see team skipping him because of his temper.