*This content was translated by AI.
Taiwan's national team has established a one-two punch as a starter ahead of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in March. This is because right-hander Shrush (25, Fukoka Softbank Hawks), who received attention from major league clubs, including the LA Dodgers in the Major League, and left-hander Lin Yu-min (23, Triple A under the Arizona Diamondbacks), who dominated Korean hitters, have been confirmed to join the team. Right-hander Deng Kai-wei (28, San Francisco Giants), the only one on the 40-man roster in the Major League, failed to join, but he will be able to play in the WBC without a power leak.
Multiple media, including Taiwanese media TSNA, said on the 29th (Korea Standard Time), "Shush, Lin Yu-min and Chen Po-yu (25) who belong to the minor league under the Pittsburgh Pirates have been confirmed to join the Taiwanese national team. Taiwan is preparing to create a March craze with outstanding pitchers," he said in unison, citing SNS news from U.S. reporter Jeff Duda, who is familiar with international baseball news.
Xu Lush is considered the "Mun Dong-ju of Taiwan" and is a starting pitcher with a large splitter falling with a fast fastball of 158 kilometers per hour. He started all 19 games of the Taiwan Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in the 2025 season and left a record of 5-7 with a 2.05 ERA. Since his team is a new team, he has only five wins, but the detailed indicators are very good. The average on-base allowance per inning (WHIP) is low at 0.81, and he has 120 strikeouts in 114 innings. On the other hand, there were only 14 walks. He is the No. 1 strikeout among Taiwanese pitchers in the CPBL in the 2025 season.
Multiple major league teams, including major league teams, have explored the possibility of recruiting Shrush, who has truly conquered the CPBL, and even NPB teams have joined the recruitment campaign. In the end, Softbank, which made the condition of guaranteeing selection, had a rush in November last year. The contract is also unprecedented at 1.5 billion yen (about 14 billion won) for three years.
Shireush has thrown well against the Korean national team once in the past. At the 2023 Asian Baseball Championship, he also showed good pitching with two hits, 10 strikeouts, and no walks in seven innings. Na Seung-yeop, Kim Bum-seok, Jung Joon-jae, Jung Joon-young, and Euro Gyeol did not lose a point against the South Korean national team, which was composed of promising players in their early 20s at the time.
Lin Yu-min also joined the Taiwanese national team without any unexpected incident. He is a left-hander who has been wary of Ryu Ji-hyun (55), the coach of the WBC national team, since November last year. Earlier, Lin Yu-min took the mound as many as three times against South Korea in the 2024 Premier 12, including the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games. In the Asian Games, he played in two games against the Korean national team alone, and showed excellent pitching with a 1-1 record and an ERA of 1.64. In the 2024 Premier 12, he pitched well with two runs in four ⅔ innings. Due to Lin Yu-min's targeted appearance, coach Ryu even revealed his plan to pay more attention to the selection of right-handed hitters than left-handed hitters in WBC.
Chen Po-yu is also a minor league member, but he is a pitcher who received so much anticipation that Pittsburgh paid a down payment of $1.25 million (about 1.8 billion won) in 2020. Although he was not listed in Pittsburgh's top prospect rankings, he started all three Triple-A games in the 2025 season and recorded a record of two wins and no losses with a 0.66 ERA. This is the motivation for competing with So Hyung-joon (25, KT Wiz) at the 2019 World Youth Baseball Championship in Gijang.
From Ryu Ji-hyun's point of view, they should beat Taiwan, which they endured. Tied to Group B along with Taiwan, Australia, Czech Republic and Japan at WBC in March. It will face Taiwan for the third time on March 8. Although it is scheduled to play the second group qualifying match against Japan, the match against Taiwan is expected to be more important than the match against Japan to pass the qualifying round.
<© STARNEWS. All rights reserved. No reproduction or redistribution allowed.>
*This content was translated by AI.
