{"id":756518,"date":"2026-06-24T04:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756518\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:53:14","slug":"yankees-sign-18-year-old-pitcher-chien-fan-lai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/756518\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees sign 18-year-old pitcher Chien-Fan Lai"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ESPN logo\" class=\"awXxV NDJZt sJeUN IJwXl CfkUa EknAv NwgWd \" data-testid=\"prism-image\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/origin-espn.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Wednesday, June 24, 2026 3:18AM<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">Chien-Fan Lai, an 18-year-old right-handed pitcher from Taiwan, agreed to a minor league contract with the <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/nyy\/new-york-yankees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">New York Yankees<\/a> on Tuesday that includes a $872,500 signing bonus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Lai helped Taiwan win a bronze medal at last year&#8217;s Under-18 World Cup, striking out 14 over seven innings in three relief appearances.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Former Yankees from Taiwan include pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, who signed in 2000, and infielder Fu-Lin Kuo, who signed in 2009.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Lai will report to the organization&#8217;s Dominican Summer League Academy.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday, June 24, 2026 3:18AM Chien-Fan Lai, an 18-year-old right-handed pitcher from Taiwan, agreed to a minor league&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[362002,64,63,794,591,2704,44,85],"class_list":["post-756518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-362002","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}