By Richard Wang, WBSC Baseball – Asia Correspondent
TAIPEI CITY — The newly appointed leader of the world No. 4 Chinese Taipei Men’s National Team, Taiwanese baseball legend Tai-Yuan Kuo (Kaku Tai Gen), has taken quick and decisive steps to form the nation’s “strongest ever” coaching staff for November’s WBSC Premier12, which will summon baseball’s Top 12 nations to Japan and Taiwan for a global battle to defend their country’s name and ranking position.
In little over a week since his appointment on 22 June, Kaku’s executive headhunting success sees three of the four current team managers from the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) – the top professional sports league in Taiwan and WBSC Member – join the Chinese Taipei top team managerial staff, considered to be “the strongest coaching staff in the history of Taiwan baseball.”
Taiwan’s Sports Ministry has underlined that this deepening parternship between the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association and CPBL will lead to the best possible result at a major championship like Premier12.
New Appointments
Fu-Lien Wu, the new manager of Chinatrust Brothers, has been named assistant manager.
The manager of the EDA Rhinos, Chun-Chang Yeh, will be the bullpen coach of the Chinese Taipei Premier12 Team.
For a hitting coach, Kaku has turned to Lien-Hung Chen, manager of Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions.
The only CPBL club manager not appointed to Chinese Taipei’s Premier12 coaching staff was I-Chung Hung, whose duties as manager of the defending CPBL champions, Lamigo Monkeys, preclude his inclusion.
Kaku named his infield coach Chien-Lin Kuo and outfield coach Wei-Cheng Chen, both former CPBL managers, while Chinatrust Brothers pitching coach Chin-Chih Huang and EDA Rhinos strengthening coach Yi-Chang Chiang will cover these duties for the Chinese Taipei National Team.
Roster Selection
Following a meeting with the nation’s sport authorities on 13 July, Chinese Taipei National Team leadership will come together on 27 July, where it is expected manager Kaku will map out an initial 70-player “interest list” to begin the roster selection process.
Chinese Taipei and No. 5 Netherlands will open action for Group A on 9 November at Taichung Intercontinental Stadium. Group A is made up of No. 3 Cuba, Chinese Taipei, Netherlands, No. 7 Canada, No. 9 Puerto Rico and No. 11 Italy.
Kaku and his elite staff will look to position Chinese Taipei among the four nations with the best win-loss records in Group A, in order to advance to the quarterfinal-knockout stage, where the four nations advancing from Group A and the four nations advancing from Group B will collide.
The biggest international baseball tournament on the calendar, the Top 12 countries from the WBSC Baseball World Rankings will unite for the first time ever at Premier12, where each nation will have to defend their country’s ranking and honour, with a $USD multi-million purse, a large-scale bonus of ranking points and pride at stake.
The full tournament schedule, bracket and complete list of venues for the WBSC Premier12, slated for 8-21 November in Japan and Taiwan, were revealed last week in Taipei City by the world governing body.
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