The CTBC Brothers of Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League announced the signing of former big league catcher Francisco Peña (h/t to CPBL Stats). It’ll be the first experience in an Asian professional league for the 32-year-old, who has spent the past fifteen seasons in affiliated ball in the United States.
Peña has appeared in the majors in parts of five seasons, logging at least brief time each year between 2014-18. He broke in with the Royals but tallied just seven combined plate appearances with Kansas City’s pennant-winning clubs in 2014-15. The right-handed hitting backstop spent parts of the next two seasons with the Orioles before tallying a career-high 142 plate appearances as Yadier Molina’s backup with the Cardinals in 2018.
Over 202 MLB plate appearances, Peña owns a .216/.249/.311 line with five home runs. He’s spent the past few seasons in Triple-A, including the 2021 campaign with the A’s top affiliate in Las Vegas. He hit .250/.322/.459 over 447 plate appearances in that extremely hitter-friendly setting but will now make the jump to Taiwan. He’ll team up with fellow former big leaguers Shawn Morimando and José Valdez, each of whom signed with the Taichung-based club last October.
Good luck to you Francisco. I enjoyed your time with the Cardinals. Especially the stories of you and your Dad, the great backstop Tony Pena.
Definitely a bad idea as he’s not a good enough hitter to stick around in Taiwan for a full season.
This team needs to sign Rex Brothers!
Lol but no, they need starting pitchers as their foreign players. They have Jose De Paula as their ace, Teddy Stankiewicz as their #2, Shawn Morimando and Jose Valdez competing for the last foreign pitcher spot. No room for a reliever like Brothers.
Brothers on front and back of uniform!