In the first half of our special feature on the opening day of Taiwan's professional baseball, we looked back over the past month or so since the start of the season and introduced some hot topics. In the second half, we will be covering topics related to Japanese coaches and players, as well as developments leading up to next year's WBC.

12 Japanese coaches in 6 teams

With the rebound coefficient of official pitches to be revised starting in the second half of the 2020 season, "high hitting and low pitching" will be eliminated, defense and base running and more emphasis will be placed on tactics, and the development of Taiwanese pitcher is also an issue, each team has invited a Japanese coach in recent years.

By 2023, all six teams will have full-time Japanese coaches, and in the off-season, two Japanese coaches have been promoted internally: Kenji Furukubo for the Rakuten Monkeys and Keiichi Hirano for the Chungshin Brothers. Last season, the team won the championship in the second half of the season, won 70 games in the regular season, the most in the team's history, and won the Taiwan Series. He is not only strengthening his own team. Hirano aims not only to strengthen his own team, but also to raise the level of the entire Taiwanese baseball team. This season, as he aims for back-to-back championships, he says, "I want to take on the difficult challenge of winning while nurturing the team.

Rakuten Although the Taiwanese team did not win the championship last season, Furukubo guided the struggling team to third place for the year and post season advanced to the next round. In addition, coach Qiang Kawagishi, who took over at Rakuten in October 2021 and has been mainly in charge of the farm team and trained Premier 12 representatives Wang Zhiqing and Zhuang Xinying, has been transferred to the first team pitcher coach, and Daisuke Hirose, who was appointed second team sports performance coach last season, will be with the first team this season.

Coach Yosuke Takasu, who has been a leader at Ajisen since 2020, was selected as the head coach of the first-team during last season, and this season will aim to regain the championship title for the first time in two years. Also, unified coach Tomotaka Tamaki infield defense, whose rigorous coaching has been likened to "Tamaki Juku," will work to raise the level and awareness of the entire team infield defense while remaining a member of the first team.

GM Toyo Liu and manager I-Chung Hong, as well as the Taiwanese Steelers, who are idealistic about Japan baseball, will be coached by Hisanori Yokota pitcher, who has been coaching since 2023, and will continue to be the first-team pitcher supervisory coach this season. The team decided to move Kazumasa Yoshida, who had a dominant performance last season, to the starting lineup, saying, "We cannot hope to advance if we use a foreigner pitcher as the closer." This season, the team selected 20-year-old Sei-Eun Chang as a set-up man and 23-year-old Shi-Syo Lin as the closer, creating a winning pattern. In addition to this, Taiko will continue to have Takafumi Sato as training director coach for the first team, and Shungo Fukunaga will be in charge of the development department pitcher for the second team.

The biggest move this offseason was at Fubon. Last October, when Taisuke Hayashi took over as deputy GM and farm director, Deputy GM Hayashi used his personal connections to invite Mitsunori Goto to be the second team manager and fielder general coach, Takeshi Shimazaki to be the second team pitcher coach, and Junpei Nemoto to be the second team conditioning general coach.

In addition, young fielder players were sent to the NEXTBASE ATHLETES LAB in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, in mid-January and young pitcher players were sent in late February for training based on movement analysis. Although Fubon has been struggling due to a number of injuries, there are many young players with high potential, and with the addition of three Japanese coaches with rich coaching experience in the NPB and the "constitutional improvement" by Deputy GM Hayashi, who laid the foundation for the evergreen team when he coached the Nakanobu brothers, we expect the team's strength to improve.

New Japanese players join the team, including many former NPB players

Among the Japan players, the 36-year-old "Old Rookie" Masaki Takashio, who was the first foreigner to be selected at the CPBL draft meeting, has been active as a winning reliever in the first team since the opening, and when he took the mound, he was cheered on by the cheering squad in the Japanese, "Do your best, do your best, Takashio!"

Before leaving Taigang due to injury last year, Kento Onodera, who had shown excellent pitch with high ball control and speed and stability, joined the team during the season from Oisix and played an active role as a closer, and extra inning signed a contract with Kazumasa Yoshida, who was called "Taigang's Darvish", and during the spring camp period, after testing, former Tohoku Rakuten left-hander Shuto Sakurai joined.

Yoshida, who is the only one registered under control of the three Japan pitcher of Taigang, has switched to the starting lineup this season. Although he entered the opening first team, he gave up the mound due to discomfort in his back and fell to the second team, but in the unification game on April 26, he made his first appearance in the first team of the season, and made a game with 2 runs in the 5th inning, and in the match against the CITIC brothers on May 3, he pitched 5 2/3 innings with no runs, and became a winning pitcher, and also went up to the stand. In addition, in the second team, in addition to Onodera, Sakurai is also firmly appealing and is aiming for an opportunity to register.

In addition, Fubon acquired former Kufu HAYATE Isaki Ninomiya and former Ibaraki AstroplanetsRyo Negishi in the form of "training foreigners". Both right-handers will first appeal in the second team and aim to enter the 4th registration slot under the control of foreigners.

It is also a characteristic of CPBL that there are not only former NPB Taiwanese players, but also Chen Jiexian and other former Japan study groups. One of them, 22-year-old Zeng Yuqing of Taiwan Steel, was a good hitter who had been attracting attention since his days at Kochi Chuo High School, and after returning to Taiwan, he was unexpectedly missed from the draft, but when he was selected 4th by Taiwan Steel in the second draft last year, he played an active role in international competitions such as the U23 World Cup. He showed his slugging power in the open game and grabbed the opening team. Although he is still rough, he is struggling while receiving advice from Wu Nenting, a senior of the "Japan Study Abroad Group" with whom he has interacted since high school.

There are also many foreign players who once played for NPB. This season, former Chiba Lotte Marines C.C. Mercedes, former The Giants Yoander Mendes, former Yokohama DeNA Joe Wieland and three NPB experienced players joined the unification at once, among which Mercedes has already won 3 wins, ERA 2.19, WHIP 0.84, and boasts a high sense of stability.

In Taiwan Steel, last season's HR, RBI 's "double crown", former Orix Stephen Moya is the sole leader with 7HR, and Brady Hagens, a fifth-year Taiwanese baseball player and former Hiroshima player, is the pillar of pitching with a league-leading ERA of 1.41, and Weiquan has former Orix Tyler Epler. Fubon also announced a contract with former Tokyo Yakult David Buchanan on May 3 after suffering an injury to a foreigner pitcher. If you include Taiwanese players, Taiwan Pro baseball, which has former NPB players on each team, will also feel more familiar to fans of Japan.

The new head coach for the Taiwanese national team in the WBC will be Tseng Hao-Ch'uan, who led the team to victory in the Premier 12.

On April 23, the CPBL officially announced that the manager of Taiwan's national team for the WBC main tournament in March next year will be Rakuten Monkeys' first-team head batting coach and Premier 12 championship manager, Zeng Hao-chuan, who also led the national team to the main tournament in the WBC qualifiers.

On March 6th next year, Samurai Japan's first match in the first round of the WBC will be against Taiwan. If you know a little about the rival teams, not just your own country, you can enjoy the international tournament even more. Taiwanese professional baseball can be viewed from Japan through the paid live streaming service "CPBLTV". Every Thursday and Friday, the second team games are broadcast live on YouTube.

However, the most recommended thing to do is to watch the game in person. With the number of flights between Japan and Taiwan increasing rapidly due to bounce demand, and direct flights to Taiwan now being operated from about half of the prefectures, we encourage you to come and watch the game live in Taiwan and experience the greatest excitement ever with all five senses.

Written by Hide Komada (Information current as of May 6th)