First Look: Hung-Leng Chang Struggles In Bradenton Debut

Former International signing out of Taiwan made his Single-A debut and struggled through 2.2 innings.

Signed at the age of 20-years-old out of Taiwan for $500,000 Hung-Leng Chang made his Single-A debut on Tuesday. While he struggled (2.2 IP, 5 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, K), it was an opportunity for a lot of people to see him pitch finally.

Before we got to my observation of Chang for Tuesday night, a little update from WTM, who has seen him pitch quite a few times in the Complex League.

WTM: I’ve seen quite a bit of Hung-Leng Chang, both last year and this year.  I’m not sure what to think of the 2022 outings I saw because I didn’t see a representative sample.  Chang had eight outings that year; four were dominant and the other four were terrible.  I only saw the good ones, so I have no idea what happened in the others. 

In the four good outings, he allowed no runs over a dozen innings, allowing just four hits and two walks, with 16 strikeouts.  He throws a variety of pitches, with good velocity, I’d guess topping out in the mid-90s.  (Usual caveat:  No gun readings at Pirate City.)  Hitters didn’t seem able to pick up his pitches much at all.  In the bad outings, he was very hittable, allowing a dozen earned runs and 16 hits in 10.2 IP.  The hitters obviously weren’t being fooled by anything in those games.

This year, Chang didn’t seem as impressive to me early.  His first couple games got pretty good results, but his third one was a meltdown.  A lot of it was an inability to throw strikes, but his velocity seemed down and his breaking stuff wasn’t as sharp. 

He recovered well from that start, though, and when I’ve seen him his stuff has looked like 2022.  I even overheard an opposing manager telling somebody nearby that Chang was a tough pitcher.  In his last 16 FCL innings before being promoted, Chang gave up two earned runs and fanned 16 in 16 innings.  When he’d have any trouble at all, it’d result from his command faltering a bit.

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AM: That last sentence was the running theme for Chang’s debut on Tuesday, as he walked five batters in just 2.2 innings. He especially had trouble located his breaking pitches, and that led to a lot of his issues.

Chang pitched out of the stretch the entire time, but had a higher leg kick when there wasn’t runners on base compared to when there was - which was often.

Savant registered him with six pitches, fastball, sinker, cutter, slider, and curveball. He threw the fastball 28 (of 69) times, and did the majority of his work when it comes to swing and miss with it. Combined with the sinker, Chang picked up five whiffs on 17 swings (29.4%) and only his slider got a swing and miss (once).

The fastball got decent spin on it, averaging around 2200 rpms, and got as high as 94 mph while sitting 91-92. The changeup was only put in play one time on three swings, a weak ground out in the first inning. It showed some decent fade away from left-handed hitters.

Obviously it wasn’t the most ideal debut for Chang, but he was hardly the first prospect to come up from the Complex league and struggle to throw strikes, and he won’t be the last.

The walks are up from a year ago, so that will be something to monitor going forward, but it will be interesting to see what kind of pitcher Chang is when he’s settled in.