https://theathletic.com/1468075/2019...wang-hyun-kim/
Everything you wanted to know about Cardinals pitching target Kwang-Hyun Kim
By Mark Saxon
Information doesn’t go through customs, and it doesn’t wait for a visa.
Thus, reporters working in South Korea, notably Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News, who writes and tweets in English, punctured the quiet of the St. Louis Cardinals’ winter to break news that the team was hosting left-handed pitcher Kwang-Hyun Kim in snowy St. Louis on Monday and that Kim was in town for a physical, a pretty good indication an agreement could be close.
The Cardinals were the last remaining major league team not to have added a player from outside the organization to their 40-man roster yet this winter, so the news gives us the first indication of the team’s offseason strategy.
Is it to lay back and pick off value targets from abroad? The team was among the last to jump enthusiastically into the east Asian talent market, but in recent seasons has gotten nice value out of Seung-Hwan Oh and Miles Mikolas, both of whom signed out of Japan. One of the Cardinals’ highest-ranking scouts, Matt Slater, has helped open the flow of that faucet after having helped the Los Angeles Dodgers do the same a generation before. If that is, indeed, the case, could they also be lying in the weeds to take a run at left-handed-hitting outfielder Shogo Takiyama, a free agent from Japan?
Considering two division rivals, the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds, have been linked to Takiyama, that might make some sense.
Even if it’s not their overarching strategy, what kind of pitcher are the Cardinals getting in Kim, presuming for the moment this deal gets finalized? Let’s take a look at some of the primary factors that will go into assessing whether this is a substantial addition or a long-distance mistake:
The Cost
The Cardinals have been clear that this winter’s maneuvers are complicated a bit by a roster that is calcified by the final, lower-value years of contracts to Dexter Fowler, Matt Carpenter and Brett Cecil. The hot stove did them a favor, perhaps, by moving quickly on starting pitching and giving them a good early indication of the price range for starters.
Nine of the top 11 free agent starting pitchers with at least 2.0 WAR in 2019 already have signed deals, and those pacts add up to $741.8 million. The Cardinals may have looked at Kim as a way to add pitching without paying sellers’ prices.
So how much will he cost them? That will depend, in part, on the size of the posting fee that will go to Kim’s Korean Baseball Organization team, SK Wyverns. The Cardinals and Kim have until Jan. 5 to cut a deal. If they do, SK Wyverns will receive a 20-percent posting fee, assuming the deal is for $25 million or less, which seems likely.
Hyun-Jin Ryu cost the Dodgers an additional $25.7 million in addition to his $36 million contract when they signed him in 2012, but Ryu was a legend in Korea by then, having dominated the league since arriving as a teenager in 2006.
Kim, 31, is also five years older than Ryu was when he made the leap across the Pacific. In 2014, the San Diego Padres won exclusive negotiating rights with him for $2 million in posting, but couldn’t come to an agreement. Perhaps Mikolas’ two-year, $15.5 million pact will be something of a comp? If so, we can assume that Kim’s posting fee will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million. So if the total package costs the Cardinals $19 million or so for two seasons, it could be a relative bargain considering Madison Bumgarner, who is a year younger than Kim, just signed for $85 million over five seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
It’s way too early to say whether Kim will prove to be a bargain, but it’s not too early to surmise that he’s probably safely within the Cardinals’ price point for adding to their rotation.
The stuff
Back in 2016, when it appeared as if Kim might become available via free agency with no posting fee, Sung-Min Kim, an expert on Korean baseball and an excellent follow on Twitter, quoted an anonymous major league scout as saying of him, “He has big-league stuff. Definitely a big-league slider. But due to his control issues, I see his best fit as a major-league matchup guy against left-handed hitters.”
Why are we dwelling on just one of Kim’s pitches? Because that slider could be a major weapon if Kim does, indeed, end up pitching at least some of the time in relief for the Cardinals. The Cardinals already had five starters penciled into the rotation and 10 or 11 of them on their roster, after all. When I asked Cardinals general manager Michael Girsch what the team would do if Carlos Martínez’s shoulder holds up all spring and the team breaks camp with six starters, he said one of them would move to the bullpen. Obvious, right?
But who? Martínez, Adam Wainwright and Dakota Hudson all have experience pitching in relief. But it doesn’t hurt that Kim, too, has that skill in his bag. He has made 23 relief appearances in his career, including last season. With Cecil derailed by injuries, the Cardinals struggled to find a second suitable lefty to pair with Andrew Miller in the bullpen last season. Though the three-batter rule figures to eliminate the strictly situational lefty this season, Kim could provide valuable cover against teams with several dangerous left-handed hitters should the Cardinals elect to use him in relief. Versatility is a big factor here.
The results
When Ryu joined the Dodgers, he had pitched seven seasons in Korea and posted a 95-52 record, a 2.80 ERA, a 1.154 WHIP, an 8.8 SO/9 rate and a 3.23 SO/BB ratio.
In 12 seasons in Korea, Kim has gone 136-77 with a 3.27 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 7.8 SO/9 rate and 2.25 SO/BB ratio.
He has been similar to, though not as dominant, as Ryu. Of course, Ryu figures to sign a contract this winter that will pay him $20 million or more per season, so the performance is reflected in the price. Kim might not be quite as good as Ryu, but that’s like penalizing Bumgarner for not being quite as good as Clayton Kershaw in the NL West for all those seasons. He’s still a pitcher you’d really like to have on your team.
Korean baseball is widely considered a better power league than Japan, but it also comes with more strikeouts. Kim, like Ryu, figures to rely more on his off-speed pitches and will look to induce bad contact from hitters to get through games. Ryu’s strikeout rate dropped in the majors (to 8.1 SO/9), but he made up for it by walking practically nobody, so his SO/BB rate (4.05) actually has gotten better in the U.S. If we assume Kim will have a similar dip, he still would have a better K rate on the Cardinals than both Mikolas and Hudson last season.
All of which leads to the conclusion …
Is he worth it?
Hard to know until the final figures are in, but based on the hot pitching market, it appears to be an avenue worth exploring.
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