Ngayaw Ake and Three Sluggers from Team Chinese Taipei
Let’s talk World Baseball Classic.
I believe one of the key impediments preventing American and Canadian baseball fans from true excitement about the WBC has to do with limited knowledge of foreign players. We are, as some economists might say, rationally uninformed. To learn the necessary statistics and fun bits about the teams and players would take too much time and effort, considering the difficulty language barriers present.
Lo and behold! I happen to speak and, to a lesser extent, read Chinese! Allow me to act as your conduit; your semi-skilled cultural guide for, if nothing else, the Chinese-speaking teams. Allow me to not only translate some of their more useful statistics, but also present some slices of their personalities.
Let’s examine three of Taiwan’s best hitters: (1) Ngayaw Ake, (2) Yi-Chuan Lin, and (3) Szu-Chi Chou:
Top wOBA+ Numbers*, 2009-2012
Player | Pinyin Name | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Average | WBC? |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
周 思 齊 | Zhou Siqi (this is Chou) | 111 | 133 | 130 | 137 | 128 | Yes! |
張 泰 山 | Zhang Taishan | 117 | 145 | 128 | 117 | 127 | No. |
張 正 偉 | Zhang Zhengwei | 111 | 145 | 116 | 124 | No. | |
林 益 全 | Lin Yiquan (this is Lin) | 145 | 108 | 107 | 130 | 123 | Yes! |
林 智 勝 | Lin Zhisheng (this is Ake) | 128 | 128 | 105 | 128 | 122 | Yes! |
*Not park adjusted.
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