Premier 12 game two: Diegomar Markwell vs Kuan-Yu Chen

Tomorrow team Kingdom of the Netherlands will take on Chinese Taipei in game two of the Premier 12 tournament; the first game of Taiwanese soil.

Manager Hensley Meulens has given the nod to Diegomar Markwell, the 35-year old lefthander of Dutch champion Curacao Neptunus, to take the mound for the Dutch. Markwell went 9-2 in twelve starts with a 2.06 ERA during the regular season. He struck out 54 batters and kept them to a batting average of .213.

His opponent, the 25-year old Kuan Yu Chen, is a left hander as well, who played for the Chiba Lotte Marines of the NPB in 2015. In fourteen games, he posted a 3.23 ERA and 47 Ks. In the Climax Series vs the Nippon Ham Fighters, Chen kept the Sapporo based team to only one run on five hits in five innings of work. Despite this good performance the Marines lost that game 2-5. Chen didn’t get a start in the championship series of the Pacific League, in which the Marines were swept by the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.

The biggest part of the Taiwanese team contains players from their own pro league with the exception of Kuan Yu-Chen and Yoh Dai-Kang of the Nippon Ham Fighters.

Tomorrow’s game will be played in the Intercontinental Stadium in Taichung