[FuzzyRussianHat]

In Austronesia Professional Baseball’s fifth season, Manila made it five-for-five atop the Philippine League. The Manatees had a franchise-worst 90-72 record, still good enough to beat Davao by six games. The top two records in the Association came from the Taiwan League with Tainan outracing Kaohsiung. The Titans won their first league crown at 103-59, finishing two games ahead of the Steelheads. It was Kaohsiung’s first winning season and an impressive turnaround from a 64-win 1968. Last year’s APB champ Taipei was a third place 84-78. Tainan also allowed only 969 hits as a pitching staff, which stands as the TPA single-season record as of 2037.

Both Pitcher of the Year and MVP in the Taiwan-Philippine Association went to Tainan ace Kun-Sheng Lin. By WAR, this was the third-best season to this point by any professional pitcher, only behind Beisbol Sudamerica’s Mohamed Ramos’ 17.9 and 17.6 in the 1930s. In his second season, Lin had 16.9 WAR, striking out 459 over 289.1 innings with a FIP- of 21. This was also the first APB Triple Crown season with a 1.21 ERA and 21-8 record. Lin also led in quality starts (31/33), complete games (21), WHIP (0.64) and K/BB (12.4). Believe it or not, Lin would go on to add similar to arguably better seasons in the coming years. He had 15 games of 15+ strikeouts in the 1969 season and would also set a postseason record with 59 strikeouts.

Lin’s wild season overshadowed a historic debut season for Kaohsiung’s Po-Yu Shao, who won Rookie of the Year. The hometown hero first baseman smacked 62 home runs with 130 RBI, 100 runs, a .699 slugging, 1.018 OPS, 229 wRC+ and 9.3 WAR. This was APB’s single-season home run record and would remain the record as of 2037 with only one other batter ever crossing 60. 130 RBI is also a single season record still standing as of 2037.



In the Sundaland Association, defending champ Jakarta took the Java League easily at 103-59. Medan won the Malacca League for the fourth straight season with a 94-68 season, fending off a solid 89-73 effort by Palembang.

Winning MVP was Palembang’s Abracham Gumelar in his first full season. The 22-year old left fielder was the WARlord at 9.8 and led in the triple slash (.317/.394/.672), OPS (1.066), wRC+ (242), home runs (42), and total bases (309). Jakarta’s Hendrick John won the Pitcher of the Year, having been acquired by the Jaguars in an offseason trade with Bandung. The 29-year old lefty was the WARlord (8.9) and leader in quality starts (15) and shutouts (5). He had a 2.08 ERA, 15-9 record, and 273 strikeouts in 276.1 innings.

The Taiwan-Philippine Association Championship saw Tainan prevail in six games over Manila, giving the Titans their first title. The Manatees are now 1-4 in their efforts in the Association final. Jakarta claimed back-to-back Sundaland Championships by downing Medan in five games. The Marlins have now dropped three straight finals.



In the fifth Austronesia Championship, the series went all seven for the second straight year. After being runner up the prior season, Jakarta earned its first overall title by besting Tainan. Although the Jaguars were the winner, the finals MVP was Titans catcher Sheng-Hsin Chin. He also won the Association Championship MVP, posting 17 hits, 7 runs, 6 doubles, 2 home runs, and 8 RBI in 13 games.



Other notes: APB’s third perfect game came on June 24 from Taichung’s Jenius Faridudin, who struck out 13 against Cebu. Both Wang Wang and Niles Chua had 21 game hit streaks, currently the top mark in APB history. APB’s first five seasons saw the lowest offensive numbers seen in any pro league to date with the league batting average in the low .210s and ERA in the 2.70-2.80 range. Historically, this is very to extremely low and APB’s stats would compete with Chinese League Baseball in the 1970s through the 2010s for the lowest offensive numbers in pro baseball.