"Expected to be the first Chinese player to reach the major league", "Take over the 20-year-old powerful pitcher who is also trembling", "Exaggerated curved ball"... For Chinese baseball fans who follow MLB Major League baseball, Zhao Lun, a potential rookie for the Milwaukee Brewers, is a role model for Young Chinese baseball players and is considered the most promising Chinese player to join Major League Baseball. According to the latest news, Zhao Lun has recently successfully qualified for the 1A League, entered the Carolina Catfish team under the Brewers, becoming the first player in the history of Chinese baseball to climb the full season of 1A, creating a new legend and setting up a new milestone for Chinese players to impact the major leagues.
Major League Baseball has a total of 30 teams, each major league team in addition to the major league 26-man roster also has subordinate sub-leagues at all levels, 3A, 2A, advanced 1A, 1A and rookie leagues are what we commonly call the small league farm system, almost every team farm has more than 200 players. Over the past few years, Chinese baseball players have been working hard to really break into major leagues.
In 2001, Wang Chao successfully signed with the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball, becoming the first baseball player in the Chinese mainland to sign a major league baseball team. Xu Guiyuan went to the United States in 2015 and successfully promoted to short-term 1A in 2018 (short-term 1A was cancelled in the 2020 minor league reorganization), which is also the best result achieved by Chinese mainland young players in recent years.
Today, Zhao Lun inherits the spirit of the predecessors to fight hard and go forward, even after experiencing difficulties such as injury and career setbacks, he still successfully advanced to the 1A league with tenacity and the spirit of not accepting defeat. Although the 1A league is still some distance away from the major leagues, it is also a new step for Chinese baseball, from Wang Chao to Xu Guiyuan and Zhao Lun, Chinese baseball players are getting closer to the dream of impacting major leagues, and also bring excellent examples to countless young baseball players in China and set a new milestone.
Emerging, the "Fireball" teenager challenged major leagues
Born on August 29, 2001, Zhao Lun formed an indissoluble relationship with baseball in the sixth grade, and was selected to join the MLB Nanjing Baseball Development Center at the age of 15 and began training. Compared with other teammates, Zhao Lun actually started late, so he has been conscientiously sculpting his baseball skills, from basic skills to post-adjustment, and doing his best to do his best.
Zhao Lun stayed in Nanjing for three full years, during which he rarely returned home, and even insisted on staying in school for training during the summer vacation. After the hard training every day, Zhao Lun will also pull head coach Zhang Baoshu to practice physical fitness, and then find the details of the pitching coach to cut the pitching action, and finally often add combat training.
Excellent talent coupled with hard training also allowed Zhao Lun to quickly emerge on the court. In 2016, Zhao Lun became the starting pitcher for the Chinese team to compete in the Youth Baseball Championship, and created the fastest pitcher speed of the tournament - 136 km / h. In August of the same year, Zhao Lun was again selected for the Chinese youth baseball team.
2018 was an important turning point in Zhao Lun's baseball career, he was invited to participate in the Cal Ripken Collegiate League held in Washington, D.C., and constantly refreshed the field speed record for the fastest ball speed of the tachometer gun in the field, even reaching a maximum of 152 km / h, shocking many scouts watching the game.
After the game, scouts from 13 teams handed out olive branches to Zhao Lun, and finally the Milwaukee Brewers successfully broke through and signed Zhao Lun. Zhao Lun, who was only 17 years old at the time, also became a "fireball" teenager in the foreign media' pen, which made countless baseball fans marvel, and the scout of the Brewers sighed: "Zhao Lun's height is only 1 meter 78, and his figure is slightly thin, but such a body can burst out a fireball of 152 km / h, which is really unimaginable." ”
The "bulldog" who never gives up and does not accept defeat
After successfully entering the team's small league system, Zhao Lun won the exclusive nickname "Bulldog" from the coach with his fighting spirit. Because of his motto of "Go Hard or Go Home," he never accepts defeat in the face of competition, like a pit bull, forever grinning and ready to bite his opponent.
But the two-year journey of the small alliance also lit a red light for Zhao Lun's body.
In 2017, Zhao Lun was diagnosed with a damage to the ulnar collateral ligament, but the team and doctors considered that he was too young, so they did not take surgical measures, only conservative treatment. However, with the increasing intensity of training and competition after becoming a professional player, Zhao Lun's elbow problem became more and more serious, which eventually led to a tear in the ulnar collateral ligament of the elbow.
In 2019, Zhao Lun completed ligament replacement surgery and began a long rehabilitation period. The misfortune is that the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020 made Zhao Lun lose another year of opportunities to temper in the small league, and it was not until 2021 that Zhao Lun finally played in the Arizona Newcomer League.
"Although the rehabilitation process is very long and there is a delay from the epidemic, I myself breathe a sigh of relief. The surgery completely eliminated my elbow injury, allowed me to be more involved in training and competition, and I am confident that I can impact better results. Zhao Lun said that his idol Shohei Otani also underwent conservative treatment and then ligament transplant surgery, which gave him great encouragement, he will never bow his head and concede defeat, but with better results, prove that he is still the "fireball" teenager who shocked the stadium.
In November 2021, Zhao Lun was invited to participate in the Autumn League AFL competition, got the opportunity to further hone himself, and became the first Chinese mainland player in history to appear in the AFL. And Zhao Lun's high-end music ball with a high of 3,000 turns, far exceeding the average level of MLB pitchers, has also aroused the coverage of foreign media, making Zhao Lun one of the most noteworthy potential pitchers in the rookie.
Of course, Zhao Lun can achieve today's results, but also thanks to mlb in the cultivation of Chinese baseball talents.
MLB is not only committed to cultivating the interest of the whole people in baseball, but also to cultivate elite players with the momentum of sparks and fully support the development of baseball.
As a practitioner of the integration of sports and education, MLB has gradually explored a set of scientific training systems tailored for Chinese teenagers. Since 2009, three baseball development centers have been gradually established in Wuxi, Changzhou and Nanjing, China, to train more outstanding Chinese baseball players.
At present, the MLB Baseball Development Center has 114 graduates, 84 people have received scholarships to study in domestic and foreign universities, 7 people signed mlb professional teams, not only out of Xu Guiyuan, Zhao Lun and other Chinese baseball stars, but also Feng Qiang, Zhang Yanida and a number of potential students to study in American universities, is making unremitting efforts to realize their "baseball dream".
Zhao Lun, who has just stepped onto a new level, said that he hopes that he can continue to improve his strength and prepare for the promotion to the high-level 1A next year; he also looks forward to seeing more baseball players from China enter the league to "fight side by side" in the future, so that the world can see the figure of China's "baseball heroes".