Note from editor: The article below was written by a young 16 year old Taiwanese American by the name of Kevin Syu. He is extremely passionate for Taiwan Baseball and for Taiwanese Hip Hop music. Be sure to “Like” this article to help support the young writer!….
The rosters for the 2013 World Baseball Classic have been announced today, and it looks like Taiwan will have a very good chance at winning the championship this year!! Taiwan is currently ranked 5th in baseball according to IBAF rankings, only behind Cuba, USA, Japan, Korea. IBAF stands for International Baseball Federation, so these rankings are official.
Kevin Syu’s ranking which is kinda biased and unofficial has the Taiwanese baseball team ranked 1st!!! This is so exciting and I cannot wait till March 2nd, when Taiwan will play their first match of the tournament against Australia. Oh and really random but Iron Man 3 comes out in theatres the day after Taiwan’s first game!!! So I am double excited for March to come!!
The Taiwan team looked very strong this year outscoring opponents 35-0 in the qualifying round. Not even one run was scored against the dominant Taiwan pitching. Three MLB players are included on the roster: 2-time 19 game-winner Chien-Ming Wang, All-Star Hong-Chih Kuo, and former national champion in 100-meter sprint and high jump Che-Hsuan Lin.
Baltimore Orioles ace pitcher Wei-Yin Chen is not on the roster because he recently had a newborn son and wants to spend time with him. We are extrememly happy for Wei-Yin but will miss him in the tournament 🙁 But nonetheless our national team still looks really strong and ready to win the championship!! 😛
Here is the full roster: http://mlb.mlb.com/wbc/2013/teams/index.jsp?team=tpe&team_id=791
And here is the highlights of our 16-0 win over Phillipines in the qualifying round: