2018 CPBL All-Star vs Samurai Japan
The CPBL have named 黄甘霖 (Huang Kan-Lin) as the manager of the CPBL All-Star Team. The Team will play one exhibition game against the Samurai Japan on November 7, 2018 at the Fukuoka Dome.
“I hope we can play a good game for all the Taiwanese baseball fans,” said the new appointed CPBL All-Star Team manager Huang Kan-Lin.
According to the league’s representative, the final roster will be out after the regular season. Would be interesting to see if the Lamigo Monkeys’ 王柏融 (Wang Po-Jung) will be on the squad or not, since he will most likely to be posted by the Monkeys in the offseason.
Huang Making Managerial Debut for National Team
This is the first time for the 43-year-old Uni-Lions manager 黄甘霖 (Huang Kan-Lin) to lead the Taiwanese national team. (See Note below)
Huang took over the Uni-Lions manager role back in December 2016 after the previous manager resigned due to team’s performance.
Under Huang’s management, the Uni-Lions have a record of 106 wins, 93 losses and 3 draw. The team is currently in the first place in the 2018 second-half season standings.
Note: It is debatable whether this CPBL All-Star Team can be identified as the national team. But what do you called a team that filled with players from Taiwan’s top tier professional baseball league? Apart from that, there is also the news about how the CPBL have been given the rights to managed the Taiwanese National team from the CTBA.
The mid-season rainy day doldroms which earn the players on monthly salaries another month of salaries.
Taiwanese players gets paid by monthly but they get paid even during the off season (full 12 months). Yeah, it’s good for the foreign players, who only get pay during the season.
The CPBL rain delay sometime will mess up foreign players’ schedule if they plan to play in winter ball else where. (But I guess the salary in Taiwan is better to not going?)
There’s an example last season, probably a record breaking high in number of rain outs. (20 games in June). The season were pushed so far back, the Uni-Lions’ Michael Nix were supposed to play winter ball in Venezuela for Bravos de Margarita, but had to stay on with the Uni-Lions for post season.
Nix was probably a lot safer and better rewarded for staying Taiwan. I don’t think Venezuela was safe enough last winter for many of the foreign players to go anywhere except the ballpark. As Venezuela’s economy has collapsed, kidnapping for ransom has become a growth industry.
CPBL obligations make it difficult for foreign players to play in the winter leagues. I think that is why CPBL teams rarely sign Latin American pitchers nowadays. They are happy playing in the Mexican League during the summer (or one of the top three Independent-A leagues if they can’t get a Mexican League contract) and then playing in their respective home countries in the winter, where they make their real money.
Top veteran stars in the top three winter leagues (Mexico, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic) can make as much as $30,000 to $50,000 for a 2.5 month winter league season, and they can make $8,000 a month in the Mexican League, plus under the table payments and perquisites like free luxury housing and luxury vehicle leases. Most Latin American and Mexican-American players like playing in countries where they can speak their own language and be big stars enough to prefer that route to the CPBL’s higher salaries.