Report: Lions reach agreement with Liao

The Saitama Seibu Lions announced they made a move, signing Taiwanese pitcher Jen-Lei Liao on Wednesday. He becomes the first domestic free agent signing since 2016.

"The most attractive things about him [are] his velocity, not counting as a foreigner and our team also having coaches and athletes from Taiwan, so he can quickly adjust to the environment," Senior Director Hisanobu "Nabe-Q" Watanabe said.

Liao, 25, was a 7th round draft pick of the Yomiuri Giants in the 2016 NPB Draft. He never played an ichi-gun game with the Giants and recorded a 2.79 ERA with 19 strikeouts, 12 walks in 19.1 innings of work down in ni-gun for 2018. He was part of the Giants senryokugai list after the 2018 season.

From 2014-2015, he was in the rookie Gulf Coast League with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, combining for a 4.54 ERA in 35.2 innings of work for two seasons. Liao was released after the 2015 season. He also had decent success at the 2015 Asian Baseball Championship.

As Nabe-Q indicated, Liao does not count as a foreigner on the 28-man roster because he went to high school in Okayama prefecture. He also went to the same high school as Lions teammate Nien Ting Wu, as they will be reunited. Unlike Wu, Liao attended a university in Taiwan.

At  201 cm, 125 kg, (6-9, 275.5 lbs) Liao was the largest player drafted in 2016, slightly ahead of Shunta Nakatsuka. He is a hard thrower who can max at 156 kph (96 mph), but lacks control.

Nabe-Q and the Lions front office are banking on the coaching staff, who have experience with Taiwan as ni-gun pitchign caoches Ming-Chieh Hsu and Kento Sugiyama were both in the CPBL with the former being from there. The Lions also have Chun-Lin Kuo, who has been with the organization since 2015.

Liao will compete for a spot in the bullpen, a position that was unstable last year after Tatsushi Masuda lost the closer role. There will be a mix of Nakatsuka, Kyle Martin, Shogo Noda and more hoping to take the middle relief innings. If Hsu and Sugiyama can coach up Liao, the best case scenario for him is to be a setup man.

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