Baltimore Orioles’ Wei-Yin Chen may give World Baseball Classic a miss - MLB News
Wei-Yin Chen, the Baltimore Orioles’ pitcher is expected not to take part in the World Baseball Classic should his native Taiwan makes it to the event. Taiwan will be playing the qualifiers as Chinese-Taipei against the New Zealand, Philippines and Thailand.
The left-handed pitcher played his first season in the Major league in 2012 with the Orioles. He made 32 starts for the team, posting a 12-11 winning record. Chen’s ERA was 4.02 during the regular season and was also a starter in a single post-season game,
against the New York Yankees. Wei won the game for his ball club, their first play-off victory since 1997.
Playing in the World Baseball Classic can keep the 26-year-old away from Spring Training for up to three weeks. Only in his second year in the Major League, Chen may not be willing to stay away for that long. Obviously it will be for his native country’s
team to qualify for the event in the first place.
Wei has previously pitched in both 2004 and 2008 Olympics for Chinese-Taipei. In the Nippon Professional Baseball (NBP), he represented the Chunichi Dragons until 2011. He had a successful time at the club which he joined in 2004.
His fastball has a decent range of 88 to 92 mph with 96 mph being the fastest clocked. His slider is generally around the mid- 80’s. Chen will be looking to improve the effectiveness of his sliders to have better results. He has recently started pitching
a breaking ball in mid-60’s, which can be a great weapon in tense situations.
The Orioles will not mind him pulling out of the event though. Chen was signed by the Orioles in the late 2011 as a free agent. There have been previous examples of Major League players participating in the World Baseball Classic and ending up with an injury
at early stages of the regular season. The O’s will certainly like to preserve the pitcher for the upcoming season as he performed quite well in the previous one.
Chen will be honoured in Taiwan by The Sports Affairs Council for his services for the Taiwanese team and helping them achieve visibility in global baseball, it was recently announced. They are also acknowledging his good performance for the Orioles in Major
League Baseball.
Wei-Yin Chen is quite young and has a lot to learn. He has a fair bit of experience in NBP, pitching there for eight years, which will certainly help him in getting hold of matters quickly.
It will be in the best interest of the Orioles to make sure that he develops into a potent force as a starting pitcher. Pitching is one of the big strengths of the ball club, which reemerged as a serious contender in 2012 and Chen can certainly be an integral
part of that for a long time to come.
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