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Gui Yuan Xu (Itchy)


weams

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I understand all the jokes and hyperbole in this thread. They write themselves.

We signed the FIRST "prospect" out of this 6 year old MLB China project that nobody ever heard of. Never heard of the program and certainly never hear of Itchy.

Where is the downside of this? We are the FIRST team with it's foot in the door of a billion plus market for players AND marketing. Signed for peanuts. The video looks like he has a pretty quick bat. He has been an award winner in the program.

I mean, we can all make jokes and stuff but it's pretty petty. Even from the owner of the site.

It is what the man says. I, for one, never heard of the man before today. But as of now...a billion or so Chinese have heard of the Baltimore Orioles.

That is a bit extreme. There may be 1.3 billion Chinese but only a fraction have internet access and/or can even read.

Its a burgeoning market to be sure, but its going to take some time and effort by the Orioles and MLB to market in China.

Does MLBTV even make it through the Great Firewall? If not, they need to get on that deal straight away.

This is going to a very interesting experiment, and it won't be easy for the Orioles to do it right. It will be telling if Chinese media throng to the GCL like they the Japanese did with Koji when he came over for his first spring training.

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What country did the O's get banned from again?

So what... we've been kicked out of nicer places.

We're Americans. Do you know what that means? It means that our forefathers got kicked out of every decent country in the world.

[video=youtube;YXjqTyQuq4w]

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That is a bit extreme. There may be 1.3 billion Chinese but only a fraction have internet access and/or can even read.

Its a burgeoning market to be sure, but its going to take some time and effort by the Orioles and MLB to market in China.

Does MLBTV even make it through the Great Firewall? If not, they need to get on that deal straight away.

This is going to a very interesting experiment, and it won't be easy for the Orioles to do it right. It will be telling if Chinese media throng to the GCL like they the Japanese did with Koji when he came over for his first spring training.

I figured a quarter of them would not be swept away in Oriolesmania. I mean, it was front page news on all their media outlets yesterday. The ones that don't read have surely heard by now.

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That is a bit extreme. There may be 1.3 billion Chinese but only a fraction have internet access and/or can even read.

Might want to rethink that.

By June 2014, there were 632 million internet users in the country and a penetration rate of 46.9%. The number of users using mobile devices to access the Internet overtook those using PCs (83.4% and 80.9%, respectively).[4]

Broadband makes up the majority of Internet connections in China, with 363.81 million users at this service tier. Wireless, especially Internet access through a mobile phone, has developed rapidly. 500 million are accessing the Internet via cell phones

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Holy crap, you know what? I just realized this guy could break the X-barrier! There has never been a MLB player with a last name that begins with X. Growing up I'd be reading the Baseball Encyclopedia in my spare time and it would go straight from the Ws to the Ys. Then in the late 80s, early 90s there was a guy (again, lack of bb-ref at work is killing me) whose last name was Xavier who topped out in AAA. Never got a cup of coffee in the majors. China is huge here, lots of X-names. The mythical X-man will come some day, it might as well be an Oriole!

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Might want to rethink that.

By June 2014, there were 632 million internet users in the country and a penetration rate of 46.9%. The number of users using mobile devices to access the Internet overtook those using PCs (83.4% and 80.9%, respectively).[4]

Broadband makes up the majority of Internet connections in China, with 363.81 million users at this service tier. Wireless, especially Internet access through a mobile phone, has developed rapidly. 500 million are accessing the Internet via cell phones

And I doubt his claim that most can't read or write. Maybe they can't read English But Mandarin and Cantonese surely can.

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This is going to a very interesting experiment, and it won't be easy for the Orioles to do it right. It will be telling if Chinese media throng to the GCL like they the Japanese did with Koji when he came over for his first spring training.

Baseball was already huge in Japan and Ichiro was a star when he signed with the Mariners. This is a very different situation. I would not expect the Ichiro treatment right away.

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Lets hope he impresses and gets a shot at the AFL.

Is 19 a bit young for the AFL?

Um, yeah I would say so. The AFL is a prospect league for advanced prospects. Each team I believe only gets 1 or 2 waivers for players under Double-A to go. Let's see if he can do better than Pita Rona in the GCL before we start having talks about sending him to the AFL.

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What in God's name are you talking about? I have no problem at all about the signing. The biggest joke I made were at the expense of the King and Prince of the Orioles's lollipop brigade. Maybe you just take a moment before you post and think, "Am I about to say something stupid?" At 2:27 I cand can see how you may not be thinking straight but to call me out over my comments is ridiculous.

What exactly does this mean?: King and Prince of the Orioles's lollipop brigade.

And if I had ti stop and think before posting - I could never post anything/////////

:)

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Might want to rethink that.

By June 2014, there were 632 million internet users in the country and a penetration rate of 46.9%. The number of users using mobile devices to access the Internet overtook those using PCs (83.4% and 80.9%, respectively).[4]

Broadband makes up the majority of Internet connections in China, with 363.81 million users at this service tier. Wireless, especially Internet access through a mobile phone, has developed rapidly. 500 million are accessing the Internet via cell phones

Technically speaking, those are still fractions.

Regardless, the point is that a move like this shouldn't have anyone expecting to find an Orioles banner in Ningxia. Nothing wrong with the move, but it's got a pretty high likelihood of long-term "meh"-ness, here and abroad.

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