CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #137
Fubon Guardians News: Yoanys Quiala
Last week on July 10, rumours began to circulate online that the Fubon Guardians are in talks with 26-year-old Cuban right-hander Yoanys Quiala.
#CPBL signing rumour: 26-year-old right-hander Yoanys Quiala ? https://t.co/CXsfH3FyTV
— CPBL STATS (@GOCPBL) July 10, 2020
Fast forward a few days later, on July 15, the Guardians filed a new hiring application to the Ministry of Labor. To read between the lines, they have signed a new foreign player and that particular player is coming to Taiwan.
On July 17, ETtoday reported the Guardians’ new foreign player is indeed Yoanys Quiala. As of right now, he is currently waiting for his coronavirus test results and should arrive in Taiwan at the end of July or early August.
Yoanys Quiala pitched in the MLB system from 2015 to 2019 reaching Triple-A with the San Francisco Giants organisation. During the 2019 off-season, he went on to pitch in the Mexican Winter League and posted a dominating 2.57 ERA, 0.98 WHIP over 87.2 innings of work.
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 2020 CPBL season.
I noticed how well he pitched in Mexico last winter and the fact that he had a good strike out rate at AAA last summer. I was a little surprised the SF Giants didn’t hold on to him, given that he’s still young. If he pitches well in the second half, he’s young enough to stick around in the CPBL for a while.
I saw his fastball can reach 96mph and there are some reports out there it can go up to 98mph. This is going to be very exciting guy to watch, only 26 years old too, could be a Henry Sosa 2.0
The question with Quiala is whether he can throw enough strikes to take advantage of his velocity and his high spin rate. CPBL hitters know the strike zone well enough.