Weekend Roundup, Other News!

Hey, everybody! It's been a week since the CBL season ended, but I just wanted to give a few updates about what's going on in the world of baseball.

If you haven't checked it out yet, the CBA official website put up the box scores from the championship series. Here is also a chart showing the top performers of the season:

Property of CBL

Wang Jing Chao (王靖超), the IF from Tianjin Lions lead the league with a .542 batting average, going 13-24 with 8 runs and 11 RBIs. The 26 year old was originally signed by the Yokohama Bay Stars in 2009, but never made it to the main team. Too bad I don't know how to calculate wins above replacement, but he's probably up there!

The top pitcher is none other than Beijing Tigers pitcher Yang Hai Fan (楊海帆). The 20 year old went 3-0 with a 1.47 ERA. He also pitched 30.2 innings with 25 strikeouts. The amazing thing was that he pitched a total of 14 innings to beat the Lions for the championship. He logged a lot of innings in a short period of time, so I hope his arm doesn't fall off in the future. Without a doubt, he is one of the top pitchers to follow in China, along with LHP Li Xin (李鑫). There isn't a scouting report out or anything, but he did pitch decently against Japan during the Asian Games. I wish nothing but luck to this kid! 加油！

Other News

The Japan All-Star Series will be starting Wednesday on November 12th. Here is the full roster for Team MLB and Team Japan (Thanks to people from Reddit). It'll be the first time since 2006 that MLB All-Stars will play in the series. Just a few pointers:

• Few big names such as Robinson Cano, Jose Altuve and Evan Longoria will be going, but the rest is kind of... not so All-Star. You would expect Mike Trout or Clayton Kershaw to join in the fun, but I guess that's the best MLB can do. I'm kind of disappointed, but I understand the risk of injury and players being tired after the long season. Perhaps, they can learn a thing or two from NBA promoting the game internationally. 
• The Japanese team is stacked with young exciting players such as Shohei Otani and Tetsuto Yamada. Otani has been on MLB's radar for a while and had a breakout year. He can throw gas and hit the ball pretty well too. On the other hand, 22 year old Yamada also had a break out year, hitting .324 with 29 homeruns and 89 RBIs.

Also, the under 21 Baseball World Cup started a few days ago. You can read all about it here, and maybe catch a few online streamed games as well. China isn't playing in the tournament, so I won't be updating much about it (or at all). 

And finally, a touching movie that I found out about yesterday. "The Only Real Game" is about baseball being played in Manipur, which is a war torn place in Eastern India. I also can't wait to see the movie "Kano", which is about the Taiwanese team that went on to Koshien high school tournament in the 1920s. 

Before I leave, I've added a few blogs to the blogroll!

• Sparts Like Us - neat blog by Simon Collins. He's the international scorekeeper from baseball leagues around the world. 
• The Baseball Continuum - another neat blog about international baseball. Love the simple design! 

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great night! What's the meaning of life? Baseball!