Wei-Chen Wang

Wei-Chen Wang (王威晨) (Running Man)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 165 lb.

• School Fu Jen Catholic University

• Born July 3, 1991 in Taipei City Taiwan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Wei-Chen Wang has played in the CPBL and for the Taiwanese national team. He is the son of Kuang-Huei Wang and the nephew of Kuang-Shih Wang, both Olympic players.

He was on the Taiwan squad that was scheduled to play in the 2007 World Youth Championship before that event was canceled. He was with Taiwan for the 2008 World Junior Championship. The Brother Elephants took him in the 13th round of the 2015 CPBL draft, after some teams had already stopped drafting. He was 1 for 12 in the 2016 CPBL, his lone hit coming off Cheng-Hao Cheng.

Wang improved to .280/.339/.360 in 2017, backing up Chih-Hsien Chiang at second base. He then erupted in the Asia Winter League, hitting .397/.512/.544 and leading in average and OBP. In 2018, he became a regular for the team (now the Chinatrust Brothers, hitting .335/.391/.387 with 74 runs and 44 steals in 63 tries. He fielded .991 in 59 games at 2B and .939 in 65 games at 3B. He tied Yin-Lun Lan for 6th in average, tied for 8th in OBP, was 5th in runs (between Pin-Chieh Chen and Lan) and easily led in swipes (26 ahead of Che-Hsuan Lin). He was the first CPBL player to reach 40 steals in 9 years, since Sheng-Wei Wang had done it.

In 2019, he fell off somewhat to .317/.349/.370 with 64 runs and 27 stolen bases (caught 11 times). He again led in steals, five ahead of Chen-Wei Chen. He got his first CPBL homer, off Michael Nix. He also won the Gold Glove at third base. He had 3 hits and 3 RBI against the Lamigo Monkeys in Game 2 of the 2019 Taiwan Series but they dropped all the other games.

He made Taiwan's team for the 2019 Premier 12. He hit .280/.333/.320 with four runs and three RBI in seven games; the speedster did not attempt a steal but handled 12 chances error-free at third base. His 8th-inning single off Australia's Ryan Searle scored Tung-Hua Yueh with the winning run. He was named the event's All-Star third baseman, joining Yi Chang as the Taiwanese players picked. He was joined on the All-Star infield by Bobby Dalbec, Ryosuke Kikuchi and Ha-seong Kim.

Chen kept rolling into 2020 at .339/.386/.433 with 29 doubles, 90 runs and a .958 fielding percentage at third though his steals were down (17 SB, 9 CS). He reached 50 hits in his 28th game, a new CPBL record; four players had shared the old mark of 30. He made the leaderboards in average (4th, between Yu-Hsien Chu and Tzu-Hsien Chan), runs (tied An-Ko Lin for 4th), hits (170, 2nd, 4 behind Chieh-Hsien Chen), doubles (4th) and steals (5th). He won a Gold Glove at third again and also made his first Best Ten team.