Giants to Sign Taiwanese Teenager?

» 01 July 2008 » In npb »

Edit, 7/1: corrected spelling of Yu-Hung Lee

Interesting news being reported by Sanspo & Sponichi: the Yomiuri Giants are moving to sign a 15 year-old Taiwanese pitcher named Lee Yu-Hung. Neither article says much about him, but he hits 92MPH on the gun and will be heading to Japan on July 1 to join the Giants as a practice player. If things work out he could be signed as an instructional player in August. The Giants also have 17 year-old Lin Yi-Hao under contract as an instructional player.

Signing & developing international talent represents a new direction for the Giants, and I hope we’ll see more of this from other NPB teams. NPB relaxed it’s foreign player roster rules a year or two ago to allow more flexibility with Asian players; perhaps the rules can be relaxed again so that players that sign with NPB teams as amateurs won’t count against the limit at all.

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  1. Patrick
    westbaystars
    01/07/2008 at 6:28 am Permalink

    This was first reported by TTT at http://taiwanbaseball.blogspot.com/2008/06/sat-scores-news.html on June 28. He spells it Yu-Hung Lee. And mentions that his little brother is taller and throws 87 mph.

  2. Patrick
    Patrick
    01/07/2008 at 8:44 am Permalink

    Thanks Westbaystars-san, I’ve corrected my spelling. There was a discrepancy in how the name was notated between the Sanspo and Sponichi reports. I went with Sanspo, Sponichi’s was closer.

    BTW, I’ve been reading Japanesebaseball.com for years. It’s one of the sites that motivated me to set this up.