BASEBALL/Uni-Lions' ace Gu Lin rare winner of CPBL's MVP award

Taipei, Nov. 5 (CNA) After six years of ups and downs, Gu Lin Ruei-yang (古林睿煬) capped one of the best seasons imaginable in Taiwan's professional baseball league by winning an award that has been forbidden territory for local pitchers for nearly two decades.

The flamethrowing right-hander of the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions was named the 2024 Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) regular season MVP on Monday, becoming the first Taiwanese pitcher to achieve that since Lin En-yu (林恩宇) of the Macoto Cobras in 2006.

From 2007 to 2023, pitchers have won the CPBL MVP four times, but they have all been foreign nationals.

Gu Lin had a remarkable 2024 season by any metric, posting a league-best 1.66 ERA and 10 wins while pitching 125 innings over 21 games, all career bests. He was also the only Taiwanese pitcher to reach double-digit wins this season.

That performance earned him 157 out of 210 points in the MVP voting, beating out CPBL home-run leader Steven Moya Mercedes of the TSG Hawks and CPBL win leader Mario Sanchez of the Uni-Lions, by 79 and 94 points, respectively.

 In addition to the MVP title, the 24-year-old also received trophies for having the best ERA and for being named as the pitcher on the CPBL 2024 all-pro team (called the "Best Nine" award).

Gu Lin credited his success to Uni-Lions manager Lin Yueh-ping (林岳平), whom he referred to as "my second dad."

That sentiment mirrored Lin's comments in late September, when he described Gu Lin as "just like my son" while discussing the young phenom's breakout season and his potential to play overseas in 2025.

Reflecting on 2018, the year he joined the team as the second overall pick in the league's mid-season draft, Gu Lin said both his father and grandfather passed away that year, and it was Lin, then the team's pitching coach, who helped guide him through that difficult time.

"I was inconsistent, and I lost faith in myself, but I believe Manager Ping faced a lot of doubts when he put me in this position. I never confronted those doubts because he bore them for me," Gu Lin said tearfully at the awards ceremony in Taipei.

"Now that I've won this award, I hope Manager Ping, my dad, and my grandfather up there can be proud of me," he said, pledging to continue to grow.

Gu Lin has battled health issues since joining the Uni-Lions. After making 20 starts in 2021 in his first full season in the CPBL, he managed only 12 and 13 appearances in the following two years, though his ERA improved significantly from 3.34 to 1.80 last year.

He was expected to lead the Uni-Lions in the Taiwan Series in October, but he was pulled from the mound after three scoreless innings in Game 1 due to back tightness and never returned in a series that the Uni-Lions lost to the CTBC Brothers in five games.

The injury also forced him to withdraw from Team Taiwan ahead of the upcoming WBSC Premier12 tournament.

Despite those setbacks, Gu Lin is expected to sign with an overseas team this offseason, with Japan's Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) reportedly the most active suitor.

On Nov. 1, the CPBL announced that the Uni-Lions had approved Gu Lin's decision to exercise free agency to play abroad, meaning overseas teams can now approach the Uni-Lions to negotiate for the star pitcher.

If Gu Lin joins the NPB this offseason, he will be the first Taiwanese player since Wang Po-jung (王柏融) in 2019 to move to the NPB from the CPBL and the first Taiwanese pitcher to do so since Lin En-yu in 2007.

All of the Taiwanese players currently playing in the NPB or for the minor league teams of NPB franchises joined them directly as student athletes from local high schools or universities.

As Gu Lin said Monday, he hopes his story proves that playing overseas is not the only option for talented high school players in Taiwan.

"Pitchers from the CPBL can also compete against foreign pitchers," he said.