Chinese Professional Baseball League teams are preparing for their spring camps, and the last several months have seen the CPBL’s five clubs adding some familiar foreign-born names to their rosters. Under CPBL rules, teams are allowed to have a maximum of four international players on their active rosters, so with some teams opting to add a fifth or sixth player to keep in their minor leagues for replacement purposes. However, replacing an international player isn’t as simple as a normal call-up — a foreign player must be released in order to be removed from a CPBL team’s active roster.
There isn’t an official limit on how many international-born players can be signed per team, so it is possible that more names could be added to this list in the coming days or weeks. (The post will be updated to reflect such moves.) Much thanks to the CPBL Stats website for their work in reporting on many of these signings. Here’s the rundown…
CTBC Brothers
Jose De Paula, Shawn Morimando, Francisco Pena, Teddy Stankiewicz, Jose Valdez
Fubon Guardians
Xavier Batista, Yomar Flande Concepcion, Luis Escobar, Joe Van Meter
Rakuten Monkeys
Ryan Bollinger, Dylan Covey, Bradin Hagens, Henry Sosa
Uni-President Lions
Brock Dykxhoorn, Keury Mella, Logan Ondrusek, Wilin Rosario
Wei Chuan Dragons
Jake Brigham, Drew Gagnon, Telvin Nash, Ronny Rodriguez, Bryan Woodall
The international player maximum seems a little weird. I think people would justifiably flip out if they started doing something like that here in America.
It’s just the usual double standard when it comes to things like that.
not every culture is the same as ours.
I kind of think you are right, hiflew. I don’t want a rule like that in America but if they did make one it seems like a lot of people would say it is rooted in racism. It also seems they look the other way when China does it. I don’t really get it. Isn’t all racism bad whether it happens in the US or elsewhere? Maybe I’m wrong and no one would call it racist if it happened in the US but I’m thinking some people would.
I’m usually the first person to call out how nobody cares when white people are the victims of racism, but I don’t think that’s the case in this situation. The reason for foreign player limits in asian leagues is due to America being the home of baseball and having such a large population, The best baseball players in the world are from America, and if their was no limit on foreign players then a team could go with a strategy of having only Americans on the team in order to give themselves the best chance of winning. That wouldn’t be a very good look for the league.
@jaytibbs: I wasn’t suggesting that it would even really be considered specifically racist against white people or Americans. They are also limiting people from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and South America as a whole on top of countries like Japan and Korea.
Also, America is a melting pot so even if they were to not limit Americans or if America actually did limit non-Americans (thank God they don’t) the players from America would likely be a broad range of many different races. What I meant is they seem to very specifically want one race if people to make up the majority of their rosters. Even if they didn’t want Americans I would still think they would try to go after players from other countries outside America as much as possible when they are great players.
I haven’t done the research or anything but in America it seems like there are a lot of teams that probably have a large portion of the roster going to players from South America, DR and Cuba as well as Japan and Korea. I don’t think that’s a bad look for American teams. I’m not sure why it would be a bad look for teams in China.
Lol the level of knowledge in America towards global society is *chef’s kiss*. The CPBL is in TAIWAN (many industries/official things in Taiwan label themselves as ‘Chinese’ for various political reasons from a long history of antagonism with mainland China).
As regards to why a national sports league would limit foreign players…I don’t know, maybe you don’t need to look any further than MLS in US/CANADA. Soccer is an actual global sport that isn’t dominated by America. As such, what does MLS do? It limits the number of foreign players on their teams. There are various reasons for this, the biggest of which is SUPPORTING the growth of your own domestic players. If all the players on every team are from other countries, your national players can’t grow into being the best versions of themselves. Every country does this to an extent…..and let this blow your mind…including America (even if it is in sports you don’t know/follow).
Wouldn’t surprise me if it was something the MLB negotiated in order to prevent their stars from going overseas in the event of a strike or lockout…
“The MLB does not speak to us from a position of power”- CPBL
Ya, they just sign guys that i have never heard of.
They can’t wedge in a 6th team somewhere?
They want to expand a team to Okinawa japan in the future
That idea was nixed years ago. There’s talks of CPBL expansion though that’s ongoing though so stay tuned
CPBL players worth keeping an eye on going fowards: Jose De Paula (health permitting), Teddy Stankiewicz, Xavier Bautista, Ryan Bollinger, Henry Sosa, Brock Dykxhoorn, Logan Ondrusek, Jake Brigham, Lin An-Ko, Hsu Jo-Hsi.
Still not one word about the Rangers stealing the #6 prospect from Washington. Best thing about Chris Young coming to Texas. He specifically works with the MLB office so the officials of MLB will not let one of their own look bad. Plus Ray Davis has already said money ain’t a problem. Rangers front office is loaded with money backed by their billionaire energy Corp group
The main reason the KBO and the CPBL have caps on the numbers of foreign players is cost, Younger, less experienced South Korean and Taiwanese players are not paid a whole lot. Bringing in foreign players who can really make a difference is an expensive proposition in light of the KBO’s and CPBL’s respective salary structures and revenue streams.
Limitations of the number of foreign players each team can sign does help the salaries of foreign players who do get signed. If teams can only sign a few foreigners, they have to sign the best available within their salary range if the foreigners are going to have a meaningful impact.
NPB has the revenues to sign more foreign players, and every NPB team is now signing about seven foreign players to start the season to fill the four major league roster spots with players getting rotated back and forth between the major and minor league based on performance, team needs and injuries.