WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL A - CHINESE TAIPEI VS CUBA

March 12, 2023

Yueh-Ping Lin

Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium

Team Chinese Taipei

Postgame Press Conference

Cuba 7, Chinese Taipei 1

Q. It's a pity that we are not able to advance. How do you see this Chinese Taipei team? Have they met your expectations before the tournament?

YUEH-PING LIN: Well, I think our team is doing really good. When we first started the training session, people questioned our offense, however our offense saves our pitcher this time. After these four games, we will try to advance our pitchers here in Taiwan. We have good pitchers, but we haven't had a solid pitcher rotation. Maybe in the amateur or professional league, we need to try to develop better or more pitchers.

Q. During the game, we saw that Tsung-Che Cheng and Kun-Yu Chiang in defense position have switched. Why did you make that decision?

YUEH-PING LIN: Lin (ph) was hit by the ball but he is in okay condition. After the first round of batting, he thinks that he can continue to bat but he cannot throw the ball really well, since he is quite stable at-bat, so we want him to have another at-bat. After that, he felt a little bit uncomfortable, so that's why we made the change.

A lot of players were not feeling that well since this is a back-to-back game. It is a very cruel and challenging condition for us.

Q. The starting pitcher of Cuba, we all see that he has been checked by the umpire twice. On the official website, it said he was out because of injury. In terms of collecting the information or intelligence, and you mentioned that people are not feeling that good in terms of the conditions. Is it because of the back-to-back game?

YUEH-PING LIN: Well, the umpire told us that the pitcher retired because of injury. In terms of the offense, yes, there was a night game before today. Actually we had three games in a row. All the players have experienced some sort of level of fatigue. And the pitcher on the other team pitched really well today. What's different from the style of this pitcher is different from those of the previous two games? There are more breaking balls, and we have more strikeouts, that's why our offense was stopped.

Q. Young had RBIs for all those four games, so can you please comment on the performance of change?

YUEH-PING LIN: Yes, I think he is now currently the best slugger in Taiwan, and he proved that he will earn his place in the major leagues in the U.S. after this tournament. Although there were some controversies in the beginning, we all see that he gives his self for the country, for the team. I would like to thank him for making all these contributions to the Chinese Taipei team.

We saw that when he's pitching. He touched the pants, and we saw some blank material, or we don't know what it is on his pants. So for the first two innings, he pitched really well in terms of his breaking ball, so we were wondering whether we can have the umpire to check whether there is any external material.

Q. For this tournament, do you have any regrets or anything that you think that we can have further improvement?

YUEH-PING LIN: Well, that's the game of baseball. We have regrets since we do not answer. However from training up to now has been more than one month. We cherish all the time that we are spending together and we all worked very hard to prepare for this tournament, and we tried our best to win, to play good games. For these four games, everyone saw our determination and commitment, and it's just a pity that we could not advance. In the future, we will continue to work hard.

Q. Let me confirm, you mentioned about the pitchers in Taiwan, they are not good enough. Is this the major reason they lost to Cuba?

YUEH-PING LIN: The pitchers are not in bad physical condition. It's just their capabilities are not good enough. It's just that they cannot pitch the ball that well when they are on the field, on the mound. So what I mean is that we need to advance the capabilities of all our pitchers in Taiwan. I'm not talking about their physical condition. I just want our pitchers to advance in the future.