Right-hander Hector Noesi has signed with the Fubon Guardians of the Chinese Professional Baseball League, the team announced. (Hat tip to the CPBL Stats page.) Apple Daily was the first to break news of the agreement, and media outlet EToday reported that Noesi will earn roughly $500K for the 2021 season.
Noesi is a veteran of six MLB seasons, tossing 395 1/3 innings with four different teams (mostly the White Sox and Mariners) from 2011-15 before resurfacing with the Marlins in 2019. Noesi posted an 8.46 ERA over 27 2/3 innings with Miami, bringing his career Major League resume to a 5.51 ERA, 1.89 K/BB rate, and 6.4 K/9 over 423 total frames. Noesi signed a minor league deal with the Pirates last winter but chose to opt out of the 2020 season.
In between being let go by the White Sox and returning to the Marlins, Noesi spent three seasons in the KBO League, so he already has some significant experience pitching outside of North American baseball. Noesi had 3.79 ERA, 3.22 K/BB rate, and 6.6 K/9 over 582 1/3 innings (all as a starting pitching) for the Kia Tigers, so this could provide some idea of what Noesi can bring to the Guardians heading into his age-34 season.
His career is in the States is FUBAR, so he’s signing with Fubon.
taiwanese baseball was once very good. it must have gone down so much.
Didnt it have a huge corruption scandal a while ago that almost caused the league to fold? Maybe I’m confusing it with another league, but I don’t think so.
Sorry I was incorrect. It’s had multiple corruption and gambling scandals that have threatened the league and has forced multiple teams to be dissolved. However it seems to be pretty clean for the last decade, or at least nothing has been discovered.
i remember they just brought back one team that they kicked out some time back. they played as a farm team in 2020 and were slated to jump back to the big time in 2021
The Wei Chuan Dragons weren’t kicked out, they left due a corporate merger that left them with an owner that didn’t care about baseball.
The only remaining team with a history of scandal is the Brothers, but as far as I know it was only their players that were gambling, not ownership forcing them to throw games like the T-Rex.
Anyway, anyone who wonders why MLB bans Pete Rose for life but not steroid users only needs to look at what happened to the CPBL attendance due to gambling.
Good for him. With a career 5.51 era and being 34 years old when spring training starts. He probably wasn’t even getting a minor league deal here in the USA.
One of the best pitchers of all time. He’s gonna rip it up in China.
taiwan.
Right, my bad
Republic of China
Watch out for this guy in the future. Much much much much better than his .261 winning percentage suggests.
Bad signing. He would be guardian any leads his team has.
I’ll show myself out.
What
I remember him from the Yankees and I enjoyed watching him pitch. He’s the kind of guy you can’t help rooting for. Didn’t have much talent at all but somehow got through the minors and made it to the bigs.
I’m still not sure why this site covers bad players going to worse leagues. Coming the other way, I understand.
This site exists solely so people have something to complain about in an otherwise perfect world.
‘I am still not sure’ why people moan about baseball news.
Good for him… also isn’t that quite a significant amount of $ for a contract in the CPBL? I mean I guess I’m not all that familiar with the contracts over there — but a half a million seems like a lot! I mean guys don’t even get that much in Japan or the KBO and as far as I know… the CPBL is no where near the size (revenue wise) as those two leagues. So either they’ve got significantly more revenue than I realized — or Noesi is really getting a BIG contract (in the context of the league) and the Guardians are expecting BIG things from him.
That IS quite a lot of money for the CPBL, only Henry Sosa and Ariel Miranda got that kind of money last year in the CPBL. Sosa probably would still be in the KBO or would be in the NPB if it wasn’t for tax problems in South Korea. The same applies for Noesi.
What is the competition like in the CPBL? Like would any of the top guys over there translate into productive ML players? I was just looking at some of the batting leaders from last year — and there’s this kid An-ke Lin (I think I spelled that wrong but it’s close) — anyway he’s only 23/24 years old and mashed 32 homers last season. Seems like a guy like him might be worth taking a flier on on a minor league deal and starting him out in AA/AAA to see if he could develop into a legitimate ML-hitter? Not even necessarily specifically him — but there are a handful of players who seem to post stats that are above and beyond the rest of the hitter… just seems like maybe there’s a bit of an untapped market to try some of those guys out in the minors and see what happens. I realize it’s not like there’ve never been any Taiwanese/Chinese players brought over — but for the most part you don’t get many. Idk maybe the competition is just so much lower that it’s not worth it — but there seem to be a few guys that I’d feel like taking a flier on and seeing what happened.
Lin An-Ko* close indeed. Ko will probably head to either the KBO or NPB first, similar to what happened with Wang Po-Jung.
The main reason you don’t get players going from the CPBL to MLB is that it takes forever to become a free agent (9 years I believe). Because of that, the top high school / college kids sign directly with MLB teams without entering the CPBL… and anybody whose talent develops a little later is stuck. There are about a dozen current MLB players from Taiwan though.
It’s hard to project players from a small league to a large league though. Some may be good at taking advantage of seeing the same pitchers/hitters every other week in a way that wouldn’t help in a league with 30 teams instead of 4.
I could see Lin Lee from the Monkeys as a major league bat, but his defense is horrible.
Noesi said no to MLB and si to Asia