Major League Baseball

Pittsburgh Pirates Sign 18 Year-old Chinese Pitcher Hai-Cheng Gong

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 2:25 p.m. ET

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Fansided, Greg Goldstein/FanSided via Call to the Pen

The Pittsburgh Pirates made news yesterday by signing 18 year-old Hai-Cheng Gong. He's the second graduate of the MLB's development program in China.

Baseball prides itself on being an international sport, and you don't have to go much further than the most recent World Baseball Classic to see that. Now, the Pittsburgh Pirates have expanded their international talent base by signing pitcher Hai-Cheng Gong from Major League Baseball's development program in China.

Gong is only the second amateur player, but the first pitcher, to sign after graduating from the MLB's China development program.

At 6'2", 165 lbs., Gong is a a projectable pitcher. Most recently, the young right hander was named the Asia U18 tournament's top pitcher after throwing a 15 scoreless innings.

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The 18 year-old will report to the Pirates complex in Florida to start his professional baseball career with the Gulf Coast Pirates. This is a rather obvious move for the Pirates being that the Gulf Coast League is the home of many young international players as well as high school amateurs adjusting to professional baseball.

This most recent signing by the Pirates has been another international milestone for an organization that has already promoted the first Lithuanian to the majors in reliever Dovydas Neverauskas and the first African born major leaguer in Gift Ngoepe.

Being a smaller market team, the Pirates seem to have taken on a strategy of trying to win through the international market. This method has already produced some solid major league talent in Jung Ho Kang, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco.

The Pirates hope that they could add Gong to that list one day.

What do you make of the Pirates going into the MLB's Chinese player development program for talent? Let us know in the comments section below.

(All of Gong's player info has been gathered from MLB.com)

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