Lin hit .130/.231/.174 for Taiwan in the 2008 Final Olympic Qualification Tournament as the starting third baseman. Despite his struggles, they won a spot in the 2008 Summer Olympics. Lin had a couple defensive gaffes in a loss to the South Korean national baseball team. In the second inning, he did not get to a grounder by Dae-ho Lee that reporters said was within his range. Later in the inning, he again did not get to a ball in close range of third hit by Jin-man Park. The two plays, coupled with a Che-Hsuan Lin miscue, contributed to two Korean runs and the win.
Lin was the top pick in the 2007 CPBL draft, taken by the Sinon Bulls. He had played for the amateur Fubon Bull previously. He did not play in 2008, as he was fulfilling his military commitment. In late 2008, he announced that he didn't want to play for Sinon when he came out of the military and that he wanted to remain an amateur. Lin changed his mind and signed with Sinon in March 2009, inking a deal with a signing bonus equivalent to $145,000. That was the second-largest bonus in CPBL history, behind Chung-Nan Tsai and even with Chang-Wei Tu, Chih-Yuan Chen and Yi-Cheng Tseng.
Lin had a great pro debut. Manning first base and hitting 7th, he was 3 for 4 in Sinon's 2009 opener. He reached 100 hits in 249 AB and 62 games, the fastest player to that mark in CPBL history to that point. On August 13, he set new CPBL rookie records for RBI (77, surpassing Tai-Shan Chang) and hits (119, breaking the mark held by Chih-Wei Shih). He hit .348/.395/.543 for the 2009 CPBL campaign and drove in 113 runs, breaking Tilson Brito's CPBL record. He finished 4th in average (behind Wu-Hsiung Pan, Cheng-Min Peng and Wilton Veras), second in hits (169, behind Veras) and third in home runs (18, behind Chih-Sheng Lin and Chin-Feng Chen). He won a Gold Glove at first base and made the Best Ten. He was named Rookie of the Year and MVP, the third player and first position player ever to accomplish that double honor; En-Yu Lin had been the last pitcher to pull off the feat (in 2005).
