CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #211
Uni-Lions News: Wilin Rosario
Another team have decided to add a foreign hitter into their lineup for the 2022 CPBL season. On January 6, the Uni-Lions announced the signing of Wilin Rosario. The 32-year-old Dominican infielder is scheduled to arrive in Taiwan in February.
Many speculated that these recent signings of Wilin Rosario and Hu Chin-Lung are the Uni-Lions solution to fix their “can not hit left-handed pitcher” problem.
Wilin Rosario was active in MLB from 2011 to 2015 with the Colorado Rockies. During his five seasons in the big league, he compiled a .273/.306/.473 and 71 home runs.
In 2016, he left the MLB system and joined the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO. Wilin Rosario became one of the most prolific hitters for the next two seasons in Korea and posted a career slash line of .330/.390/.625 with 1.015 OPS and 70 home runs over 246 games.
With that dominating KBO record, the NPB came knocking at the end of the 2017 season. Wilin Rosario ended up signing a massive 3 million USD deal with the Hanshin Tigers.
However, like many foreign players, his hitting did not translate to the NPB. In 2018, he posted a disappointing .242/.285/.374 with .658 OPS and was released by the Tigers at the end of the season. Based on Wilin Rosario’s NPB scouting reports, his Achilles’ heel was his inability to hit breaking pitches (mainly slider) on the outside corner.
After leaving the NPB system, Wilin Rosario was active in MiLB, Dominican Winter League (LIDOM) and Mexican League (LMB).
Prior to his signing with the Uni-Lions, he played in the LMB with a .890 OPS over 130 plate appearances. In LIDOM, he posted a .647 OPS with only 31 plate appearances.
@WilinRosario conectó su jonrón #26 de la temporada y remolcó una (97). Batea .332 con #HanwhaEagles. #KBO pic.twitter.com/CTB4tIwN4z
— Águilas Cibaeñas (@aguilascibaenas) August 12, 2016
New Member of Pro-Ball Grand Slam Club
With his signing with the Uni-Lions, Wilin Rosario will become the 24th player to join the “Pro Ball Grand Slam Club“, where the players had experiences playing in MLB, NPB, KBO and CPBL.
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 2022 CPBL season.
Rosario hasn’t done much since a strong season at AAA in 2019. We’ll see what he has left.
If I have to make a prediction on the CPBL performance of those foreign players right now on a 1 to 10 scale.
It would be Xavier Batista (8), Ronny Rodriguez (7), Wilin Rosario (6 or 5.5), Telvin Nash (5 or 5.5).
He was above average in LIDOM this year too
What’s Rosario’s salary this year?
I know that Rosario received a lot of money in Korea and Japan.
How about in Taiwan?
Not sure about Rosario’s salary in the CPBL. A lot of CPBL teams don’t announce their foreign players salary.
If you want me to take a guess, I think he will be probably somewhere around 250K USD?