BOSTON — WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup 2010 MVP Tzu Wei Lin became just the 13th player born in Taiwan (Taichung, 1994) to arrive in Major League Baseball (MLB).
The Chinese Taipei National Baseball Team star also played in the inaugural U-23 Baseball World Cup last year in Monterrey, Mexico, and batted .583.
Tzu started the 2017 season at AA Portland, was recently called up by the Boston Red Sox and made his debut as a pinch runner on June 24. He started on June 26 at third base against the Minnesota Twins at Fenway Park and collected his first career MLB hit during the second inning.
At the U-18 Baseball World Cup 2010 in Thunder Bay Canada, the then 16-year-old Tzu helped lead Chinese Taipei to the world championship title, with a leading batter average of .607. He earned the Most Valuable Player honour and was named to the All-World Team as the third baseman.
After starring in the U-18 World Cup, he reached an agreement with the New York Yankees on a proposed US$ 350,000 signing bonus, but couldn’t complete the deal before playing at the high school level in his home country.
He then signed in 2012 for the Boston Red Sox, who agreed on a $2.05 million bonus, the highest ever for a Taiwanese position player and the second behind the US$ 2.2 million pitcher Tsao Chin-hui received from the Colorado Rockies in 1999.
Many of the biggest stars in baseball today played in the WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup (and/or the qualifiers), including Shohei Ohtani (Japan), Aroldis Chapman (Cuba), Clayton Kershaw (USA), Francisco Lindor (USA) and countless others.
