After disappointing tournament results, including a last-place finish in their own Taichung pool in 2023, Taiwan has assembled the island’s best international roster yet for the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
The island of Taiwan is in the midst of a massive upswing in the popularity of baseball. Formally known as the Republic of China, but competing under the name Chinese Taipei due to international pressure, Taiwan’s history with baseball is both complex and central to the national identity. The sport was introduced to the island starting in 1897, when it was taken over by the Japanese Empire. Originally a game of colonial elites, it quickly spread to the indigenous and Han Chinese populations of the island. In 1925, a Taiwanese high school qualified for the prestigious Koshien tournament – Japan’s high school baseball tournament that invites the sort of love, grandeur and emotion common to college football in the States – and made it all the way to the Final.
After both the end of the Japanese occupation and the island becoming the last holdout of the Republic of China, the government of Taiwan actively invested in baseball as a way to build a national identity separate from the now-communist mainland. Baseball is now the de facto national sport, and continues to grow year after year. Taiwan’s major-professional league is the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), so named because of the official Republic of China moniker. The bulk of Taiwan’s national team is drawn from the CPBL’s six teams.
Perhaps the best hurler on this team is Yu-Min Lin, who has been part of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization since 2022. In 2025, he spent his first full season at Triple-A Reno and posted a 6.64 ERA over more than a hundred innings pitched. In a league where the average ERA was 5.43 and on a team whose average was 6.29, it wasn’t a bad first season. Lin struck out 85, walked 60 and allowed 124 hits. But the most interesting part of the lefty’s pitching is his arsenal – his fastball, only topping out at around 96 miles per hour and most often between 89-92 mph, has great ride in the zone and is complimented by a devastating low-80s changeup, a mid-70s curveball, and a low-80s sweeper. According to MLB.com’s prospect rankings, “[both] breaking balls play with extreme spin with the curve, in particular, averaging above 3,000 rpm at Triple-A Reno in 2025.” He is currently ranked as Arizona’s No. 20 prospect, and was placed No. 4 in the previous ranking. Lin also pitched four scoreless innings against Japan in the 2024 Premier12, another international baseball tournament which is below the WBC in the sport’s hierarchy.
Alongside the top prospect is Ruei-Yang Gu Lin, a six-season stalwart with the Uni-President Lions in the CPBL who jumped to NPB’s Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2025. With the Lions, Gu Lin pitched to a remarkable 2.48 ERA over the course of 384 innings, striking out 398 batters and logging 32 wins. These are no small feats, given that the CPBL is well known as an offense-heavy league. With the Fighters in Japan, Gu Lin notched an equally impressive 3.62 ERA with 34 strikeouts across 32.1 innings. He walked only eight batters in the major-league season (he also walked four while briefly playing on the 2nd team), the fewest since his 2020 season, wherein he only faced 57 batters.
A distinctly western name appearing on the Taiwanese roster is that of Stuart Fairchild, a five-year MLB outfielder whose mother emigrated to the United States from Taiwan at the age of 12. Fairchild has never played more than a hundred games in an MLB season, but has played 277 in his career. His best season was likely 2024, wherein he notched an OPS of .654 and drove in a career-high 30 runs.
Joining him in the outfield is Team Captain and 10-year UniPresident Lions veteran Chieh-Hsien Chen. Chen was the deciding factor in Chinese Taipei’s first-ever Premier12 title, as his three-run home run sealed a 4-0 shutout victory over Japan – the same game that teammate Yu-Min Lin admirably started. In his 935 career games, all with the Lions, Chen has racked up 422 RBI, 1,177 hits and 1,546 total bases. Over his career, he’s batted .337, getting on base at a .413 clip.
Five-year major league Yu Chang joins the team for his second WBC appearance, after batting a lively .438 with an even .500 on-base percentage in 2023. Chang hit a pair of home runs in the tournament, driving in eight on seven hits. With the Fubon Guardians in New Taipei City, Chang has hit 24 home runs across the last two seasons, batting .284 with a .409 on-base percentage. While offenses in the CPBL are generally strong, home runs are not quite as prevalent as one might expect. That is decidedly not the case with An Ko Lin, who has amassed 112 big flies in 583 games with the well-represented UniPresident Lions. Lin’s 32-homer campaign in 2020 remains his most potent year to date, but he’s also put up 15, 16, 20 and last year, 23 home runs in seasons spanning a seven-season career. An even more consistent slugger is Kungkuan Giljegiljaw, expected to be the team’s primary catcher. Giljegiljaw is indigenous Taiwanese, a group of people descended from Austronesians who inhabited the island long before the Han Chinese crossed the Taiwan Strait and became the dominant population. Giljegiljaw has hit 23, 23, and 24 home runs in his last three seasons, respectively, while batting .277 and driving in 319. Not bad for any batter, much more for a backstop.
Chinese Taipei is managed by Hao-Jiu Tseng, a former outfielder who has been the national team’s leader since the 2019 Premier12. Tseng coached the team to both its stunning 4-0 victory over Japan in the aforementioned 2024 Premier12 tournament, and in its return back into the WBC during the 2025 Qualifiers. What should folks expect from his squad in the 2026 edition of the Classic?
Best-case Scenario:
3-1, advancing to the quarterfinals and the semifinals, but losing in the latter. This would be a dream come true for Taiwanese baseball fans, and would finally prove that they are true peers with South Korea and Japan in the worldwide baseball order. This team has the talent and experience to beat South Korea, Australia and Czechia in the Tokyo pool, and if they do so, a loss to Japan won’t be much worth worrying about. Things get much tougher in the knockout stage, as they’d likely be facing either Venezuela or the Dominican Republic – two of the best rosters in this tournament. At best, they can win a miraculous quarterfinal game, but I can’t see them winning in the semifinals. Even so, this performance would be remembered for generations of Taiwanese baseball fans.
Worst-case Scenario:
1-3, failing to advance but qualifying for the next WBC. In this scenario, the worst elements of Chinese Taipei’s Classic past come back to haunt them, and the disorganized team loses to Australia, Japan, and Korea while eking out a win over the Czech Republic. This roster is, to my eye, too talented to go winless. But that doesn’t mean their showing can’t still hurt. The silver lining would be automatic qualification for the next WBC, as only the last-place team in each pool falls back into the Qualifiers, having to earn their spot in the future.
The Likely Scenario:
2-2, failing to advance but qualifying for the next WBC. The odds are strong that this team will finish in third place in the Tokyo Dome-based Pool C. The roster has more talent than Australia or Czechia, but less talent than Japan or South Korea. Against such stiff competition, this wouldn’t be anything for Taiwanese fans to be mourning over, but it wouldn’t be much better than 2023. It would, if nothing else, reinforce the status quo that has reigned in Asian baseball for decades now; Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia – in that order.
Batter to Watch:
Kungkuan Giljegiljaw – While there are a lot of fun players on this roster, I can’t ignore the allure of a slugging catcher. Is Giljegiljaw the Taiwanese Cal Raleigh? Maybe! But as the most consistent 20-homer player in the CPBL lately, his power isn’t just a gimmick. It could be the spark that propels this Chinese Taipei squad to new heights.
Pitcher to Watch:
Yu-Min Lin – I spoke at length about the raw potential of Lin’s pitching repertoire, but it bears repeating here – he’s a lefty with devastating offspeed pitches and tons of room to grow. We’ve seen how meaningful the WBC can be for players early in spring (most notably Nicaraguan pitcher Duque Hebbert, who earned a contract with Detroit after striking out Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, and Rafael Devers in the same inning). Maybe a bit of national pride, adding to his strength and skill, is what Lin needs to take the next step forward in his career.