About halfway in between North Carolina and Hermitage today, I started seeing some tweets come through that the Pirates won the bidding for Jung-ho Kang, a shortstop from the Korean Baseball Organization. I’ve sort of kept one eye on the whole story of his posting process through the Twitter account of Dan at MyKBO, but it was more out of curiosity than thinking that the Pirates would win the bid; assuming that the Pirates get Kang signed, he’s coming off of a huge year in the KBO and assuming that he signs with the Pirates, he’ll almost certainly become the first South Korean position player in MLB history [INSERT CORRECTION HERE: the first South Korean player from the KBO to make the MLB, not the first South Korean in the MLB in general, as obviously Hee-Seop Choi and Shin-Soo Choo have had varying impacts on American baseball. I apologize for the mistake, which can only partially be blamed on being scatterbrained from my drive today. The rest of the post has been slightly updated to correct for this mistake.].
Let’s hit the specific of the process first: the Pirates bid $5+ million for the right to negotiate with Kang. That was the highest bid out of the teams interested and his Korean team (Nexen) will accept that bid. That means that the Pirates will have thirty days to negotiate a contract with Kang. MLB Trade Rumors says that they expect Kang will sign for ~$5-6 million per year, and while there’s no word on length, I’d assume that it’d be similar to the deal Yoenis Cespedes signed with the A’s a couple of years ago in that it’ll be probably be a three or four year deal that will terminate after it’s up, sending Kang into free agency instead of arbitration (this is pure speculation, and I do have Car Brain at the moment, but Kang is 28 and I don’t imagine that he OR the Pirates want to see him signed for six years at this point).
Kang is coming off of a monster year in the KBO, in which he hit .356/.459/.739 with 40 homers and 36 doubles in 117 games and 501 plate appearances. Those are obviously crazy-looking numbers, so it’s worth noting that the KBO is a very offensive-friendly environment (I learned this winter, for example, that Shane Youman is still pitching over there, to give you an idea of the level of competition). Still, those numbers are obviously good enough to catch your eye at just about any level.
This is a pretty interesting and fascinating move for a number of reasons. Aside from no KBO position players making their way to the big leagues in the States, this is also the first time the Pirates have gotten involved in any sort of bidding at all for an established international player. Pretty much every time a Japanese player is posted, I think to myself, “It would be cool if the Pirates got involved here,” and I think that was why I was keeping one eye on the Kang process; not because I know how the Pirates are going to use Kang (I don’t), but because the Pirates being willing to get involved in the bidding for a player like Kang (and then presumably to pay him a decent amount of money, though that’s down the road for now) is a very positive thing.
I suspect that we’ll learn more about Kang and what the Pirates have in mind for him soon, but for now everyone is posting the link to this Keith Law ranking of free agents before the off-season began, which is interested in his power but skeptical of his ability to play short. You could probably make a decent argument to play him at any infield spot at this point, though you could also make a decent argument to not play him at any infield spot, too. Since the Pirates are also relatively set around the horn right now and the KBO/MLB learning curve is virtually unknown, the Pirates could be looking at this as an opportunity to put a talented player on the roster, to bring him to camp, and then figure everything out once they start to put the players on the field.
Whatever the case, I think this is a pretty exciting day for the Pirates. I was already settling into the conclusion that they were done for the winter, and instead they’ve won the bidding for the reining KBO MVP and shown a willingness to spend a little bit more money beyond the budget that they’ve set for themselves.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a lot more about this in the next couple weeks. Until then, I’d suggest following Dan from MyKBO on Twitter, as he’s generally regarded as the go-to English language resource for Korean Baseball.
