The Wei Chuan Dragons of Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League are posting right-hander Jo Hsi Hsu for MLB clubs, as noted by CPBL Stats. Hsu is considering a jump to either MLB or Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan this offseason. Hsu himself told reporters that he’s already visited Japan and had dinner with NPB legend Sadaharu Oh, who now serves as the chief baseball officer for the SoftBank Hawks. According to Taiwanese outlet TSNA, Hsu has also garnered stateside interest from the Dodgers.
CPBL players can be posted for international free agency with the permission of their club after they’ve reached three years of service time. Hsu, 25, is in the midst of that process now and will market himself coming off a 2025 season where he pitched to a sterling 2.05 ERA with a 28.0% strikeout rate across 19 starts and 114 innings of work. That workload is fairly standard for the 119-game CPBL season, but it leaves questions about how well he’d be able to handle the rigors of a 162-game schedule as a starter in the big leagues.
Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan of Fangraphs took a look at Hsu’s profile last month and suggested that it’s “probable” most MLB clubs will view him as a reliever as he was unable to maintain his top velocity throughout even that 19-start campaign in the CPBL this year. Longehagen and Fegan both suggest that Hsu has the talent to be a late-inning set-up man in the majors, and a player headed into his age-25 season who could immediately slot into the back of any bullpen would surely be an attractive piece for teams to consider. With that being said, Longenhagen and Fegan both suggest that Hsu might prefer to first go to Japan to attempt to hone his skills as a starter before making the jump to MLB.
That’s a path that could be attractive for financial reasons. Hsu is young enough that even if he spent two or three years in Japan, he’d be able to come to MLB much younger than the average free agent pitcher. That could set him up for a more lucrative payday, particularly because then all posting fees owed to his the Dragons would be attached to his NPB contract. That would leave MLB teams able to offer Hsu the full amount they believe him to be worth rather than sending a portion of that money overseas to the Dragons. The CPBL posting fee is 20% of the first $25MM a player earns in their MLB contract, 17.5% of the next $25MM, and 15% of any dollars above $50MM. For minor league contracts, the posting fee is equivalent to 25% of the player’s signing bonus.
Beneficial as a stop in NPB might be financially, Hsu certainly wouldn’t be the first player to eschew a larger immediate payday for the opportunity to pitch in the majors sooner. Roki Sasaki opted to be posted last winter, when he wasn’t yet old enough to sign more than a minor league contract, and Shohei Ohtani famously did the same when he first came over to the United States. If Hsu does come stateside, it seems as though the Dodgers have at least some interest in his services. L.A. is hardly a club that’s been shy about making a splash in international markets, and while those efforts have been primarily focused on NPB (Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Sasaki) and KBO (Hyeseong Kim) players in recent offseasons, it wouldn’t be a shock to see them expand their horizons to Taiwan.
It seems silly to call anything about a back-to-back World Series champion disappointing, but the Dodgers made a big investment in the back of their bullpen by picking up Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates last winter that ultimately did not pan out. Adding an arm like Hsu to the fold alongside Scott could give L.A. some additional firepower in the bullpen to help make up for the loss of Evan Phillips, who underwent Tommy John surgery in June and was non-tendered this past week.
Of course, the Dodgers are hardly the only team who could have interest in Hsu’s services. International relief signings have typically come in at a fairly affordable price tag that could make him an interesting target for virtually any club searching for bullpen help this winter. Woo-Suk Go (two years, $4.5MM), Yuki Matsui (five years, $28MM), and Shintaro Fujinami (one year, $3.5MM) are all players who signed from the international market as relievers in recent years, and none came with the typical price tag associated with late-inning relievers already established in MLB.
“Hsu has also garnered stateside interest from the Dodgers.”
SHOCKING
LOLOLOL DODGERS SIGN EVERY PLAYER OUT OF ASIA SUCH AN ORIGINAL TAKE.
Except they don’t, if anyone would take 20 seconds to do their research.
Am I missing someone obvious, or is this the first CPBL-MLB post since Wang Po-Jung?
If he joined the Tigers, could we say Jo Hsi and the Pussycats?
I’m a little rusty on my knowledge of Taiwanese players… Is there something to be excited about with this guy ( triple digit velocity, forkball, etc)? If he’s got good stuff someone should sign him for a couple years and ramp him up in the minors for a few months before bringing him up as a pen piece. He’ll make more in MLB than anywhere else.
Wouldn’t they call it a chopstick ball?
Per Fangraphs’ write-up on Hsu:
Hsu first appeared on The Board during the 2021-2022 offseason, when as a 20-year-old rookie he was instantly one of the hardest-throwing Taiwanese pitchers. Tommy John surgery kept him from pitching in 2022. When he returned very late in 2023, his stuff was back, and that carried over into a totally healthy and productive 94.2 innings in 2024. Then Hsu was absolutely vicious during the early 2025 WBC qualifier that Taiwan won, in one of the more significant team sports success stories in the history of the country. During this late-2024 and early-2025 window, Hsu’s fastball was parked in the 94-96 mph range and touched 98. Though he had a great 2025 season — a career-high 114 innings (not counting the WBC qualifier), only 14 walks, a 2.50 ERA and 0.81 WHIP — his fastball velo really slipped toward the end of the year, when Hsu was sitting more in the 91-95 mph range with the occasional 96-97 mph peak.
Post-2025, there’s both MLB and NPB interest in Hsu. If your baseball team had to play a game of tackle football, Hsu would be the kicker. He’s a super skinny 5-foot-10, but he’s also an unbelievable athlete who explodes down the mound and is able to create a vertically-oriented fastball by virtue of the way his shoulders and hips separate. Hsu’s heater doesn’t have huge life on its own right now, but it does have favorable angle and axis. If he can sustain above-average velocity, then his fastball will be an impact pitch. If not, it’ll be homer prone. While Hsu lacks starter’s size and has yet to demonstrate true MLB starter durability, he does have a starter’s pitch mix headlined by a plus splitter in the 80-86 mph range. The raw quality of Hsu’s breaking stuff is below average (he doesn’t spin the ball especially well), but he commands multiple pitches at multiple speeds. Here Hsu is considered a more likely fit in relief, but a really good one, in either a valuable long or late-inning role. From a workload standpoint, it’s possible that his new team would initially deploy him as a reliever to manage his season-long innings count in 2026 — a 20 inning increase is standard, which would put Hsu at 134 projected innings — and then try to start him later in 2026, or in 2027 and beyond.
Buyers beware.
Only one of these guys listed as recently signed has an ERA south of 4.00 in MLB