Eight-year MLB veteran Wei-Yin Chen has signed with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League, the team announced Tuesday. He’ll return to the mound after not pitching anywhere during the 2023 season.
Chen, now 38 years old, was a mainstay in the Orioles’ rotation from 2012-15 when he recorded 706 2/3 frames of 3.72 ERA ball (4.14 FIP, 4.04 SIERA) with an 18.5% strikeout rate, 5.8% walk rate and 38.5% ground-ball rate. The Taiwanese-born lefty came to the O’s on a four-year deal after a five-year run with the Chunichi Dragons of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He parlayed his solid showing in Baltimore into a five-year, $80MM contract in Miami that didn’t at all pan out as he or the Marlins hoped.
Chen was active for parts of the first four seasons of that contract, combining for 358 innings with a greatly diminished 5.10 ERA. His average fastball dropped by more than a mile per hour, and while his command remained strong and his strikeout rate slightly improved in Miami, Chen was quite a bit more homer-prone with the Fish than he had been with the O’s. A UCL injury midway through his Marlins tenure wiped out nearly all of his 2017 season. It never required surgery, but Chen still struggled out of the 2018 rotation and in a bullpen role in 2019. The Marlins ate the final year and $22MM on his contract when they released him following the 2019 campaign.
Since leaving the Marlins, Chen signed a minor league deal with the Mariners but never made their roster. He returned to Japan for the 2020-22 seasons, suiting up for the Chiba Lotte Marines and Hanshin Tigers. He was limited to 68 innings with those two teams’ big league clubs but pitched quite well when healthy and on the roster, turning in an ERA well shy of 3.00. Chen didn’t pitch in 2023.
While a big league comeback as he approaches his 39th birthday (July 21) seems like a long shot, it’s not impossible. The Atlantic League is an official partner league of MLB, and we’ve seen plenty of players utilize that setting as a launching pad back to affiliated ball over the years. MLB scouts will surely get looks at him on the mound. A strong enough performance could net him a minor league deal with an MLB club and put him one step away from getting back to the majors. Even if not, he’ll make for a fun comeback story to follow on the indie circuit this season.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it will travel 450 feet
So you are saying this idea is quacked?
“turning in an ERA well shy of 3.00”: so was his ERA above or below 3.00? Since he wants an ERA below 3.00, this phrasing might not be ideal
It also is no more effort to simply put what the ERA actually was. When it doubt, just be specific. We as the readers didn’t benefit from knowing less.
Not to mention that the innings count is wrong. His stats from Baseball Reference:
2020 (Chiba Lotte): 26 IP, 7 ER, 2.42 ERA
2021 (Hanshin): 9.1 IP, 4 ER, 3.86 ERA
Total: 2.80 ERA. Innings are wrong and I wouldn’t call that ERA “well below 3.00” either. I wish the reporting on NPB was better here.
Steve Adams, confounding readers since 2013
Maybe Steve Adams is not so specific with his wordies and relies on crutches like “well shy” because he’s, well, shy. He probably doesn’t make direct eye contact at the holiday Christmas party.
I haven’t heard that name in a longtime
Nor the name Mitchell Page. Say, what name do they use when they make announcements at airports when they’re looking for you. Paging Mitchell? Or paging Page? Seems awfully redundant
Guy has the funniest ears ever. Worse than Machado
Signing with a team that only has 4 championships? Sign with a real team like the Somerset Patriots and their 6 championships.
Keep talking that trash you’re gonna get quacked
Pshhhh the Ducks own the Patriots
Chen made over $95,000,000 in his MLB career. Smh. Wow
Was decent end of rotation guy w/Orioles, do rmbr he was usually gassed mid gm. Also rmbr hot muggy Baltimore weather messing w/em his 1st few starts there. Good Luck !
I remember his days in Baltimore. His go to 0-2 waste pitch was often a woah and a wei yin instead of low and way outside.
I’d rather watch him in Flushing than Julio Teheran.
Wei-Yin Been, Wei-Yin Cheninson? Jesus loves you more than you will know. Whoa oh oh.
Um, respondent above forgot about the 30+ IP at 1..76 ERA for the Hanshin Western League club in 2021. That’s what Adams counted, but he seems to have left out 2022, which wasn’t quite as good. It is confusing to have teams with the same names under a corporation rubric in two different leagues without a place identifier, and I don’t know enough to say which of those Tiger teams is the “big club,” But Chen was a teammate of Jerry Sands on one of them, so that should count for something.