CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #259
Uni-Lions News: Keyvius Sampson
On January 6, the Uni-Lions’ GM told ETtoday, that they have agreed to terms with Keyvius Sampson for the 2023 CPBL season. The 32-year-old American right-hander is set to return for his second season in Taiwan.
Keyvius Sampson joined the Uni-Lions as the mid-season signing. In over 61 innings of work, he posted a 3.54 ERA and 1.34 WHIP.
During the offseason, there were rumours that the Rakuten Monkeys were eyeing Keyvius Sampson for the 2023 season. But obviously, the deal with the Monkeys did not materialise in the end. According to the Monkeys’ general manager, Sampson was on their target list during the preliminary evaluation stage, but they decided not to pursue him.
As of today, the Uni-Lions have Brock Dykxhoorn, Logan Ondrusek and Keyvius Sampson as their foreign players.
The Uni-Lions GM revealed they are planning to sign one more foreign player and are currently reviewing several potential candidates.
- TSNA reported on January 3 that one of the candidates had previous KBO experience.
- Liberty Sports on January 4, one of the candidates is a right-hander who pitched in the NPB in 2022.
K MACHINE! The Uni-Lions' Keyvius Sampson struck out 13 over 7 strong innings of work. đĽ
Sampson also tied the Uni-Lions franchise record for the most strikeouts in a single game. The record was previously set by Apolinar Garcia back in 1995. #CPBL pic.twitter.com/MW9I1N7xZH
— CPBL STATS – âĽď¸ #95, Mina (@GOCPBL) August 20, 2022
Further Readings
Foreign players comes and goes, therefore we compiled a foreign players tracker to keep track of all the foreign players signing for the 2023 CPBL season.
Sampson has great stuff. His issue has always been command. He’s a good player to keep giving chances to because he only needs to improve his command a little bit to be a dominant pitcher at the CPBL level. There’s no guarantee he’ll ever find that command, but he can afford to miss with his location out over the middle of the plate more often in the CPBL than in the KBO or MLB.
The best foreign closers in NPB history were Dennis Sarfate and Marc Kroon, both pitchers with plus stuff, who didn’t have the command to be successful in the MLB majors. In Japan, with a wider strike zone and a slightly lower level of opposing talent, they could afford to miss their locations in the strike zone more often, and they were absolutely dominating.
Any rumors on what other foreign players CPBL teams are looking at? I like lefty Matt Dermody as a possible CPBL candidate given his age and his history of pitching in NPB and KBO.
Pedro Fernandez (age 29) and Erick Leal (28) both pitched well in the Winter Leagues after pitching well in the Mexican League last summer. Fernandez led Mexico in Ks last summer and finished second in the Dominican this winter, and Leal finished 3rd in Ks in Mexico and 1st in Venezuela this winter.
This year not a lot of rumours for some reasons. That’s why I didn’t even want to make a rumour tracker.
There were the Tyler Eppler and Brandon Waddell rumours, but teams were very quick to admit they were in talks with them.
I would expect Brandon Waddell to be a relatively expensive sign for a CPBL team. He’s only 29 years old in 2023, and he pitched well in relief at the AAA level in 2022 before going to the KBO. One would think an MLB organization would offer him a contract to pitch in AAA.
Any updates on Shawn Morimando signing with the Brothers? I wonder if the NC Dinos are talking to Morimando’s agent — last I heard the Dinos were still looking to sign a second foreign pitcher.
According to Brothers GM on December 25, they have agreed to terms (reached an understanding) with Shawn Morimando.
But Shawn Morimando’s agent reached out to me and told me it is incorrect, that is not 100% true.
This is why I didn’t write about Shawn Morimando on the blog.