[Anchor]

The strength of the Taiwan national baseball team, which will compete with South Korea for the championship at the Nagoya Asian Games, has suddenly weakened. With key overseas players from the WBC national team, who were originally on the roster, dropping out in large numbers, the South Korean national team led by Manager Ryu Ji-hyun has received a green light in its bid for a fifth consecutive title.

Reporter Bae Jeonghun has the details.

[Reporter]

The Chinese Taipei Baseball Association officially announced its final 24-player roster today (September 7) for the Nagoya Asian Games.

Five players have been replaced from the preliminary roster released last July, and all of them are overseas players who played key roles in the WBC last March.

Lin Yun-min, who started against South Korea in the WBC and is famously close with South Korean pitcher Kwak 빈 (translator note: keeping original text format or rendering as Kwak Bin if needed, but per rules keeping names straight - wait, let's look at the name in text: 곽빈 투수 - Kwak Been), and power-pitching prospect Sun Yi-lei, who made a relief appearance against South Korea, were both excluded. In addition, Hsu Jo-hsi, the hard-throwing pitcher for Japan's Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks who started the WBC opening game, minor league pitcher Chuang Chen-chung-hao, and infielder Cheng Tsung-chen were all left off the final roster.

With the strength of Taiwan, our strongest rival, weakened, our national team's quest for a fifth consecutive Asian Games title has received a green light.

[Ryu Ji-hyun / Manager, National Baseball Team for the Asian Games: "It seems to have created an advantage where we can focus more of our efforts on specific players during our strength analysis. However, despite this, they still have good pitchers. So I think we need to prepare a bit more in that regard."]

As a result, left-handed pitchers Lin Yu-min of the Arizona Diamondbacks minor league system, who pitched brilliantly in two games against South Korea at the previous Hangzhou Games, and Hanwha's de facto ace Wang Yen-cheng are expected to take on the core roles on the mound for the Taiwan national team.

(Video Editing: Lee Jae-sung)