Source from focustaiwan
By Lung Po-an and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, July 25 (CNA) After a very long wait, Washington Nationals pitcher Chien-Ming Wang of Taiwan will finally return to the Major Leagues with a start against the New York Mets on July 30 Taipei time, the Nationals said.

“It would mean a lot,” Wang said in an interview with the New York Times of his return to a Major League mound. “A lot of people tell me, this kind of injury, no one comes back.”

In the interview with the newspaper published July 24, Wang said he still could add 2 or 3 mph to his sinker and guessed that he was 80 to 90 percent as effective as he used to be in his long journey to regain the vaunted sinker that once tied up big league hitters.

Randy Knorr, the manager of the Nationals’ Triple-A farm team, the Syracuse Chiefs, told the New York Times he thought Wang was close to being ready.

“Timetable- wise, obviously, you’d like to see some guys have a little more time. We don’t have that time, but I think he can compete up there, I really do,” he was quoted as saying.

Wang will have his chance to prove it for real when the Nationals host the Mets Friday night in Washington (7 a.m. on July 30, local time).

But the 31-year-old right-hander has come off two mediocre rehab outings at the Triple-A level, the most recent against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees on June 24.

In that game, Wang lasted five innings, throwing 96 pitches, 63 for strikes. He struck out five but yielded five runs on eight hits, including a three-run homer.

In the two games, he had a less-than-stellar 6.75 ERA, but Knorr was reportedly happy with what he saw.

“He’s fighting to get the sinker as consistent as possible,” Knorr told the New York Times. “I think there’s times when he might have wanted to go to another pitch, but he decided, ‘I need to get this sinker going — that’s the way I pitch,’ so he chose to do that.”

Wang said he was grateful for all the support from local fans, adding that he saw Taiwanese fans at every game over the past month.

Wang’s best showing in the minor leagues occurred in the first four rehab games he pitched for the Nationals’ Class A-Advanced and Double-A teams, in which he posted a 2-0 record and a 1.00 ERA.

Wang was sidelined after having surgery on his right shoulder in July 2009.

His best season came in 2006, when he won 19 games for the New York Yankees with a 3.63 ERA and finished second in the American League Cy Young Award voting that year.

For his career, Wang has a 55-26 record and 4.16 ERA in 109 Major League games.