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I saw a couple of other Kim comments not mentioned here before.
One is from former Memphis outfielder Jamie Romak, who was Kim’s teammate in Korea.
Jamie Romak, teammate of Kwang-hyun Kim, on new @Cardinals LHP, "Worst case he is a high leverage, multi inning reliever…fastball touched 97 out of pen. But he is a starter for me. He embraces the pressure packed atmosphere of KBO. Phenomenal athlete…huge value sign for STL."
— CJ Nitkowski (@CJNitkowski) December 21, 2019
Here are some comments from Seung-hwan Oh.
“Kim has a lot of talent and a strong work ethic,” Oh said. “We won’t have to worry about him.”
“I’ll get in touch with Molina and tell him what a great pitcher Kwang-hyun is,” Oh added.
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191219001700315?section=sports/sports
Good info on Kim. Iwas wondering how Mr Oh was doing in Colorado. He has a 9.33 ERA for 2019 do maybe not so good.
Oh was released by the Rockies last summer and returned to the KBO. He will not pitch in 2020 due to elbow surgery.
<Brian Walton wrote:
Oh was released by the Rockies last summer and returned to the KBO.>
Thanks Brian. Somewhere in the cobwebs of my brain I remember that but had forgotten it. Well, that means that Eugene, the interpreter, should be available……LOL
Nope, Eugene Koo signed on as the interpreter for Matt Williams, who is managing a KBO team this year.
Those are some very positive reviews of Kim. I would love to sit here next year and say this was another steal from the Cards’ scouting department in Japan/Korea, much like Oh and Mikolas.
<Brian Walton wrote:
Nope, Eugene Koo signed on as the interpreter for Matt Williams, who is managing a KBO team this year. >
Ha, never thought of that. Eugene got smarter- works from home……LOL
Whatever happens with Kim this season, it won't be because he was unprepared… https://t.co/dvIBZvnEO4
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) January 6, 2020
I’m starting to feel more and more that this will end up being one of the best signings of the offseason by anyone. At worst, he should be a solid bullpen guy. I think he’ll be a mid rotation arm for 2020 at least.
Could be a real plus.
Glad Mo finds guys like Oh, Mikolas and Kim. Paying big, long term dollars for a free agent who either gets injured or has a serious production decline (ala Leake, Cecil, etc.) is a much bigger risk and mistake I hope he doesn’t make again.
bccran
Glad Mo finds guys like Oh, Mikolas and Kim. Paying big, long term dollars for a free agent who either gets injured or has a serious production decline
How would one know which free agents to go after? We all know at this point that Mozeliak is bad at it, but who do you sign? I thought Peralta was a great get and Lohse and Holliday worked out in the past. He certainly needs a more recent win on the big FA contracts. I’d much prefer he only looks at this niche market (Japan) or the older guys on 1-2 year deals like Berkman, Beltran, Miller, Neshek, and Norris. Holland may be the only one that really backfired.
Excellent points, Pads. Especially about Lohse and Peralta, both of whom had kind of slipped my mind lately. Good, relatively low-risk moves, Lohse in particular.
And if Neshek hasn’t retired, I’d like to see the Cards bring him in on an incentive-laden deal, or perhaps even as an NRI at Spring Training. I like a bullpen with a variety of pitching styles, and Neshek would of course already be familiar with the city and the organizational culture.
You’re more forgiving than I am, though, when it comes to Andrew Miller. I think Miller has also backfired pretty badly — but at least he didn’t cost a high draft pick in addition to the pile of money set on fire. Like with Holland. Bleccch.
The B-Ref and Fangraphs sites each have Miller sub-replacement level for last year, and his Win Probability Added was also quite poor, signifying that he was at his worst at pretty much the worst possible times. (Actually, now that I look it up, he permitted just a .637 OPS in “low leverage” situations, and a .786 in “high leverage.”)
Who should the Cards go after in free agency, even on the cheaper deals? You’re right, Pads, that’s the key. And the scout or scouts who recommended Cecil, Gregerson, Holland, and Miller should be sacked. Or reassigned anyway. Because that quartet has an $80,000,000 price tag and has (per B-Ref values) cost the team three full games in the standings. Yes, they’ve been collectively worth negative three WAR so far.
Anyway, like cranny and card25, I am very optimistic about KK Kim. And I wish that casual fans didn’t judge him by the modest contract. He’s a real talent, even if he’ll make a fraction of fellow lefties Keuchel, Bumgarner, and Ryu. People praise the short-term deal for Kim. But at a mere $4-5M per year, I’d rather have him for a decade than just two years. I’ve got a good feeling about the guy.
Brian, I forgot to ask at the time but do you have any idea how much cash the Cardinals received for Adolis Garcia?
Sorry. The Cards acquired Martinez for cash and he became a contributor to the team. The Rangers acquired Garcia for cash as well. If he is successful with the Rangers, the loss could sort of balance out the Cards’ gain from Martinez.
For whatever reason, I thought Miller just looked a lot better than his stats showed. He was a little more wild than I thought, but he probably had the hardest workload of any of our relief pitchers given when he’d come into the games.
Sorry. The Cards acquired Martinez for cash and he became a contributor to the team. The Rangers acquired Garcia for cash as well. If he is successful with the Rangers, the loss could sort of balance out the Cards’ gain from Martinez.
Gotcha. That could very well happen.
It has been said by some announcers that JMart was acquired for $1 from the Royals. Not sure if that is true but if so, we darn sure got our bucks worth. Gonna miss you Jose. Hope you do well in the AL.
For whatever reason, I thought Miller just looked a lot better than his stats showed. He was a little more wild than I thought, but he probably had the hardest workload of any of our relief pitchers given when he’d come into the games.
I felt similarly. He had a lot of games where he was quite solid, and some games where he was very bad. I guess those bad games really skewed his numbers.
For those who haven’t looked, I show the Cardinals relievers’ stats in our Reliever of the Year article. It includes some stats you don’t often see like first batter faced, inherited runners scored and the like.
The article is free.
“Fill in the blank, Ryu kinda looks like a long blond haired ______________”
Macy’s parade balloon? Baby LeRoy? Hideki Irabu?
“For whatever reason, I thought Miller just looked a lot better than his stats showed.”
I can understand that. He was a very specific kind of bad pitcher in 2019. Could be very good for a couple of weeks at a time, or even more. But then terrible. Terribler than anyone else in the pen. Home runs at the worst of possible times, hit batters, free passes.
(Edit: Now that I look more closely, Miller’s year was even more schizo than I thought. Awful in April & September, but surprisingly [to me anyway] an ERA just a whisker under 3.00 from May through August.)
I think I was embittered by his April, then horrified by his September. So those months burned into my memory. Thus my biased brain wouldn’t fully acknowledge his solid four months in the middle. Of course, what all of this means for Miller’s 2020 season, nobody knows. All we can say for sure is that the killer Miller of 2014-17 no longer exists.
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