CPBL Foreign Players Updates Volume #209
Wei Chuan Dragons News: New Foreign Hitter
On January 5, the Wei Chuan Dragons general manager revealed they are currently targeting another new foreign position player. The team plans to run with two foreign hitters lineup for the 2022 CPBL season.
According to the Dragons, this new yet to be named foreign hitter is an infielder with previous experiences in MLB and NPB. That is too vague to figure out who that player is.
However, more information regarding the identity of this potential foreign hitter has surfaced. According to SET News and NOW News, this player is from the Dominican Republic and was active in Japan last year.
Based on the latest clues, all the signs point to Ronny Rodríguez, who played for the Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2021.
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.
According to Ronny Rodriguez earned $368,000 playing Japan last year. Given that he didn’t stick in NPB, maybe he’d get a $70,000 to $90,000 three-month guarantee from the Dragons?
Funny how we were just talking about this. Anyway, UDN just “leaked” the salary information for the following foreign players in 2022 season.
Brock Dykxhoorn – 400K USD. Teddy Stankiewicz – 500K USD. José De Paula – 600K USD.
For 2021 season, Mike Loree was on 2-year 1M USD. And Henry Sosa was on 2-year 1.2 M USD.
Surprising that no KBP team would beat the Uni-Lions successful offer to Brock.
It seems to me that if CPBL teams are willing to pay that much, they could sign some the same 4-A pitchers KBO teams are now signing. CPBL teams apparently want in-league success before paying these kinds of full year salaries, though.
Yeah, I think there’s always the concern of spending big on someone new and he is unable to adjust to playing in Asia.
I’m interested to see how many foreign players each CPBL organization signs going into the 2022. It would make sense to sign as many as five pitchers, and if you are planning to carry a position player to sign two of those. It might make sense for CPBL teams to sign Indy-A/Winter League pitchers to cheap contracts ($25,000-$30,000 for three months) to pitch at the minor league level to see if any of them will pan out. It doesn’t take much to beat Indy-A salaries, and the team could give the player a raise for major league service time, most likely after a more expensive foreign player has been dumped.
I think we will see more signing announcement before January 8. Because this is kind of like a soft deadline for applying work permit.
I believe due to the pandemic, the league are applying foreign players visa in bulk.