[FuzzyRussianHat]

Austronesia Professional Baseball added pitcher Wei-Chung Hsu into its still fledgling Hall of Fame as the fifth member. Hsu was the lone inductee from the 1983 voting, receiving 77.4% on his first ballot. One other first ballot guy came close but missed at 61.8% in 3B Stanley Susilowati. No other players were above 50% and no one was dropped after ten ballots. 1B Shen-Hsiung Hsue was close though, falling below 5% on his ninth allot. He was hurt by beginning at age 31 and spending only five seasons in APB with three in CABA. Still, Hsue won two MVPs and five Silver Sluggers in his brief run, leading in home runs thrice.



Wei-Chung Hsu – Starting Pitcher – Tainan Titans – 77.4% First Ballot

Wei-Chung Hsu was a 5’8’’, 195 pound right-handed pitcher from Juifang, Taiwan; a suburban district in eastern New Taipei City. He was a well-rounded pitcher with very solid stuff, movement, and control. Hsu’s velocity peaked at 95-97 mph, but he could beat you just as easily with his sinker, curveball, or changeup. Hsu had excellent stamina and solid durability, regularly going deep into games. His pitch arsenal led to an extreme groundball tendency, although he also got plenty of strikeouts.

Hsu was a great college pitcher at Taipei’s National Taiwan University. In the 1966 Austronesia Professional Baseball Draft, Tainan selected Hsu 11^th overall. He was an immediate starter and star, winning Rookie of the Year in 1967 and leading the Taiwan League in strikeouts. The next year saw a career-best 11.8 WAR and league leading 353 strikeouts. Each of his seven seasons with Tainan were worth 7+ WAR with three being worth 11+.

However, Hsu never won the Pitcher of the Year because of his teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Kun-Sheng Lin, who won six straight from 1969-74 and won four MVPs in that stretch. Hsu was second in 1968, 69, 70, and 72 with a third place in 1973. In any other scenario, Hsu’s stats were good enough to win multiple awards, but he was stuck as the second best on his own team behind arguably the greatest six year stretch from any pitcher by Lin.

Despite their combined efforts, Tainan only made the playoffs twice in this stretch. They would win the Taiwan-Philippine Association title in both 1969 and 1972, but fell in the APB final in both seasons. Hsu missed the 1969 postseason with a torn labrum, although he bounced right back without issue. In the 1972 postseason, he went 3-0 over three complete games with a 1.67 ERA and 28 strikeouts. In total with Tainan in seven seasons, Hsu had a 118-78 record, 1.96 ERA, 1885 innings, 2296 strikeouts, and 67.0 WAR. This would ultimately be the entirety of his APB career, as also like Lin, he left for Major League Baseball.

Unlike Lin, whose MLB run was immediately derailed by injury, Hsu would manage a few solid seasons. He signed a five-year, $1,890,000 deal with Indianapolis. Although he missed a month to injury, Hsu led the National Association in ERA in his Racers debut, helping them to the 1974 World Series. He had an unremarkable 4.24 ERA in five postseason starts and saw very middling numbers the next year in Indy. After a rough start to 1976, the Racers traded Hsu to Oakland. In total for Indianapolis, he had a 3.30 ERA over 543 innings and 8.5 WAR.

Hsu managed a solid second half though with the Owls and gave Oakland two more respectable seasons in 1977 and 1978. They made the playoffs twice, but couldn’t put together a run. Hsu had a 3.31 ERA over 692.1 innings with 14.9 WAR. He became a free agent at age 34 and signed for the 1979 season to a four-year, $2,600,000 deal with Philadelphia. Hsu had a nice first year in Philly, but missed much of 1980 to elbow inflammation. After an poor spring training in 1981, Philadelphia cut Hsu before the season’s start.

Hsu signed later that month to a deal with Albuquerque and put up decent numbers with the Isotopes worthy of a spot in the rotation. Unfortunately that summer, he suffered a stretched elbow ligament, putting him out 10 months. Hsu attempted a comeback and spent parts of 1982 under minor league contracts with Las Vegas, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Baltimore. His only MLB action of the season was four relief appearances with the Reds. Hsu retired after the season at age 38 and for his MLB run had a 112-81 record, 3.14 ERA, 1784.1 innings, 1215 strikeouts, and 33.9 WAR.

For Hsu’s full professional career, he had a 230-159 record, 2.53 ERA, 3669.1 innings, 3511 strikeouts, 755 walks, 322/449 quality starts, 232 complete games, FIP- of 72, and 101.0 WAR. That combined resume would be undisputed for a HOF nod, but he was mostly to be judged on only his seven APB seasons with Tainan. 67.0 WAR over that short of a stretch is remarkable, but his teammate Lin’s unprecedented 95 WAR in a similar stretch overshadowed him. Still, Hsu remained a very popular player with many in Taiwan still cheering him on in his American endeavors. In the end, Hsu received 77.4% on his debut ballot and found his slot in the APB Hall of Fame.