National baseball team opens training for WBC qualifiers

Taipei, Feb. 3 (CNA) Taiwan's national baseball team finalized its 36-player training roster that it will draw on to compete in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) qualifying round in Taipei later this month and began training for the event Monday.

Of the 36 players, there are 19 pitchers, four catchers, eight infielders, including Taiwan's star of the 2023 WBC Yu Chang (張育成), and five outfielders, and nine of the players compete abroad.

Only two of the players, however, catcher Lin Chia-cheng (林家正) and outfielder Chen Chieh-hsien (陳傑憲), were on the Taiwan team that won the World Baseball Softball Confederation's (WBSC) Premier12 championship in November 2024.

The roster has to be whittled down for the Feb. 21-25 qualifying round at the Taipei Dome to 28, but regardless of who plays, Taiwan will be heavily favored to advance to the 2026 WBC finals.

To advance, Taiwan will have to take one of the top two places in its qualifying group that also includes Nicaragua, Spain and South Africa.

Neither Spain nor South Africa made it into the 2023 WBC, and a win by either country's team over Taiwan, on a high after its Premier 12 win and currently ranked third in international baseball by the WBSC, would be considered a massive upset.

The top 16 of the 20 teams in the 2023 WBC automatically qualified for the 2026 edition of the top global baseball tournament that usually draws many of the game's top stars.

Taiwan has to qualify because it finished last in its 2023 WBC group by virtue of tiebreakers after all five teams in the group had a 2-2 record.

Of the nine players on the training roster who play overseas, eight are pitchers, including Zhuang Chen Zhong-ao (莊陳仲敖), Sun Yi-lei (孫易磊), Lin Sheng-en (林盛恩) and Sha Tzu-chen (沙子宸), while Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) is an infielder.

Lin Sheng-en (林盛恩), 19, who plays in the Cincinnati Reds organization, was the only overseas player who reported for Monday's training session, while the others are expected to report in around Feb. 10-14, according to the team's manager Tseng Hao-jiu (曾豪駒).

Lin Chia-cheng, 27, is currently a free agent and in the United States trying to negotiate a new contract, said Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), president of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), and that means Lin might not be available for the WBC qualifiers.

Yu Chang was not able to play in the Premier 12 tournament due to injury, but he said he was in good physical condition and would be ready for the games later this month.

The Taiwan team will train for the WBC qualifiers at the Taipei Dome until Feb. 13 and then at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium from Feb. 15-17.