The 5th World Baseball Classic (WBC) Group A preliminaries will be held in Taiwan next year. The two Taiwanese stars that the Chinese team intends to recruit have been playing steadily in the big leagues recently, especially the 26-year-old outfielder Stuart Fairchild, who is of mixed Taiwanese and American descent, has been hitting .476 in his last seven games, while the other fielder, Corbin Carroll, has been on fire a bit recently.
The Reds' Fairchild, who is starting 5th in center field today, has a single 4-hit game with 1 hit and a strikeout, and has 3 straight games with a hit. He is batting .284 after the game, and has 21 hits and 10 RBIs in his last 7 games, including 1 bomb, contributing 2 RBIs and scoring 5 runs, and is hitting .476/.522/.667.
The Rattlers' 22-year-old Taiwanese-American outfielder Corbin Carroll, who was just awarded USA TODAY's Minor League Player of the Year award, faced the Dodgers, who have the best record in the league last week, and swept a long, bases-clearing hit, contributing three RBIs in a single game, and performed brilliantly. He is currently hitting .256.
The Chinese team confirmed their coaching staff for the Classic today, and the next step is to decide whether they will put in Corbin Carroll and Stuart Alexander Fairchild. Head coach Lin Yue-ping said that they will include them as long as they contribute to the Chinese team, and stressed that they "will not give up any opportunity to invite them. However, the secretary-general Yang Qinglong revealed today that the agency of the two men returned that they would contact again, but there has been no news yet.
