Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part II

Continuing on with my list of contemporary minor league stars, who I define as players with at least 4,000 plate appearances in the high minors (AA and AAA) on the theory that they had to be pretty good ballplayers to last that long.  Part I of this series can be found here.

3.  Scott McClain (5,160 AAA plate appearances, 800 AA and 88 MLB).  Before wrapping up his professional career at age 37 at the end of the 2009 season, McClain played a whopping 20 seasons of pro ball.  His 5,160 plate appearances at the AAA level was the most of any contemporary player I could find.

McClain hit 292 home runs in the minor leagues and another 89 in Japan’s NPB.  However, he only hit two HRs in the major leagues during cups of the coffee with the Rays in 1998, the Cubs in 2005 and the Giants in 2oo7 and 2008.

McClain played mostly 1B and 3B and didn’t become a great AAA hitter until he was age 26.  He was at least able to make some money in his professional career by playing five season in Japan’s NPB, where American players generally earn at least the major league minimum.

4.  Andy Tracy (4,519 AAA, 1,247 AA, 314 MLB).  Another great minor league thumper, Tracy has hit 296 minor league home runs but only 13 in the show.

Tracy wasn’t highly regarded as a prospect out of college (Bowling Green in Ohio) and thus played four years in college before signing with a major league franchise.  He had a huge year in the Eastern League at age 25, which got him substantial playing time the next year for the 2000 Montreal Expos.  He got into 83 games that year and hit .260 with 11 HRs and an .824 OPS, excellent for a rookie.

However, Tracy got off to a dreadful start in 2001, hitting only .109 with a .427 OPS in 38 games before being sent down the minors, except for the briefest cups of coffee in 2004, 2008 and 2009 (a total of only 33 plate appearances), for good.  Like McClain, Tracy played mostly 1B and 3B, and was a great AAA hitter for years.

Tracy’s last season was 2011, when he hit .288 with a .987 OPS in 85 games for the Reno Aces of the AAA Pacific Coast League.  Reno is a great place to hit, but Tracy’s numbers are so impressive that I have to think that it was accumulated injuries (Tracy was 37 that year) that ended his professional career.  For what it’s worth, I saw Tracy take Carlos Marmol deep in a game in New Orleans between the Zephyrs and the Iowa Cubs in May 2007.

5.  Mike Cervenak.  (3,785 AAA, 2,091 AA, 13 MLB).  One of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, I’ve written about Cervenak before here and here.  He’s playing in Taiwan this year, most likely finishing out his pro career at 36.  He’s hit 192 minor league home runs.

6.  Cody Ransom (4,455 AAA, 554 AA, 687+ MLB).  Another one of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, almost certainly because, like Cervenak, Ransom’s a former Giants prospect.  However, unlike Cervenak, who never really got a fair shot with the Gints, Ransom was once a highly regarded prospect even though he was 9th round draft pick.  The Giants like toolsy prospects, and Cody had tools.

As I’ve written before a number of times, Cody is one of those rare players who developed significantly as a professional hitter after age 27, and he got his first significant major league playing time last year at the ripe old age of 37 (282 plate appearances for the Brewers and Diamondbacks after never getting more than 86 in any of his nine prior major league part-seasons).

Cody, or “Babe” as I like to call him, started the 2013 campaign with the San Diego Padres, but they designated him for assignment after he started the year 0-for-11.  The Cubs claimed him off waivers and in three games he’s off to a 4-for-9 start with home run, two doubles and a walk.  Given his red hot start as a Cubbie, and the fact that Wrigley Field is a great place for a guy with power like Ransom, there’s a good chance he’ll stick around in Chicago for a while.  It doesn’t hurt that the 2013 Cubs look to be a bad team in need of players who can hit a little.

7.  Kevin Barker (5,140 AAA, 1,320 AA, 323 MLB).  Another minor league bomber, Barker hit 271 minor league home runs (but only six in the Show), finishing his professional career in 2011 for the Oaxaco Guerreros (“Warriors”) of the Mexican League.

Barker got into 78 games for the Brewers in 1999 and 2000 at ages 23 and 24, but he didn’t hit the second year, and got only a few cups of coffee after that.  His best minor league season was probably 2009 when he hit 22 HRs and had a .927 OPS in 101 games for the AAA Louisville Bats.

8.  Michael Restovich (3,503 AAA, 565 AA, 297 MLB).  A former Twins prospect, Restovich hit 214 minor league home runs, but only six in the majors.  He was a fine minor league hitter who just didn’t hit in the limited major league opportunities he got.  His professional career ended in 2011.

9.  Chris Richard (3,192 AAA, 1,065 AA, 1,006).  Originally drafted by the Cardinals, at age 27 Richard played 136 games for the 2001 Orioles in which he hit .265 with 15 HRs and a .770 OPS, while playing RF, CF, 1B and DH (a very unusual combination).  He didn’t hit well in 2002, however, and that was the end of his major league career except for cups of coffee with the 2003 Rockies and the 2009 Rays.  Richard slugged 198 minor league HRs in addition to his 34 major league jacks.  His professional career ended in 2010.

10.  Jeff Bailey (2,995 AAA, 1,826 AA, 159 MLB).  Yet another minor league slugger, he hit 191 minor league dingers but only six in the Show.  Bailey spent parts of six seasons with the Pawtucket Red Sox from 2004 through 2009 and got three cups of coffee from the true Red Sox the last three of those seasons.  He finished his professional career with the Rochester Red Wings in 2011.

11.  Tike Redman (3,549 AAA, 724 AA, 1,461 MLB).  Just in case you were thinking all contemporary minor league stars were sluggers, Redman was a center fielder who just wasn’t quite good enough on either side of the ball to have a long major league career.  However, the Pirates certainly gave him opportunities, as his 1,461 career major league plate appearances attest.

12.  Luis Figueroa (4,682 AAA, 1,602 AA, 16 MLB).  A shortstop who apparently hit just well enough to be a AAA starter for years and whose glove, I presume, wasn’t quite good enough to make him a major league late inning defensive replacement, Figueroa’s North American career appears to have ended last year with the Oaxaca Guerreros.  He got three major league cups of coffee in 2001, 2006, 2007, but appeared in a total of only 18 major league games.

13-16.  Joe Thurston (4,868 AAA, 633 AA, 384 MLB), Esteban German (3,720, 511, 1,170), Ray Olmedo (3,381, 734, 484) and Bobby Scales (3,342, 708, 158).  A quartet of middle infielders/jacks-of-all-trades.

Thurston got into 124 games for the 2009 Cardinals but didn’t hit.  German was a briefly hot prospect who played semi-regularly for the Royals from 2006 through 2008 but hit worse each successive year — he’s now playing in Japan.  Olmedo looks like a classic glove-tree shortstop who didn’t hit much even at AAA, but stuck around because of his defensive acrobatics.

Bobby Scales was a fine minor league hitter who played a lot of different positions but probably not well enough at 2B or 3B to keep him in the majors.  He had a .373 on-base percentage last year for Japan’s Orix Buffaloes, but the team didn’t bring him back in 2013, probably because he didn’t hit for power and his defense wasn’t very good.

I strongly suspect there are other contemporary minor league stars I have failed to identify, and I invite you to send in comments identifying them.  However, I think I’ve made a point: there are still a large number of minor league stars in today’s game playing great ball at the AAA level, who either through bad luck, late development or by virtue of being just a hair below the talent level of major leaguers have spent most of their long professional careers in the minor leagues.

Karma Catching Up to Frank McCourt and Other Notes

The never ending saga of the Frank/Jamie McCourt divorce has entered a new phase.  Jamie is seeking to re-open the former couple’s marital property settlement agreement and obtain an additional $770 million on top of the $131 million she received previously.  All I can say is that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving ex-husband.

Frank McCourt is a sack.  According to wikipedia, McCourt financed his 2004 purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers mostly with debt which he repaid in part by raising ticket and concession prices every year he owned the team.  He paid himself and his now ex-wife enormous salaries out of the Dodgers’ enormous revenue streams, but largely avoided paying taxes by structuring these payments as “loans.”

During his tenure, McCourt effectively ran the team into the ground, so much so that the team filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011, despite being one of the top three or four teams in MLB in terms of revenue streams.  MLB was able to force McCourt to sell the team, but McCourt then sold the team for $2 billion, more than 4.5 times what he had paid for the team only eight years before.

Frank McCourt is an insatiably greedy scumbag who married a woman after his own heart.  When the marriage failed (surprise, surprise!), she went after his ill-gotten gains with the determination of a hungry lion after an old and sickly wildebeest.  In my book, that’s karma.

As a San Francisco Giants fan, I normally wouldn’t shed a lot of tears over terrible things happening to the Dodgers.  As a baseball fan, however, it bothered me to see a storied franchise being raped by an “entrepeneur” who wasn’t content to take the typically obscene profits major league owners make in the course of buying and selling top franchises, but had to milk the situation for still more.

I’d rather see the Dodgers fail the old fashioned way: poor baseball decisions like bad trades and overpaying already expensive free agents who don’t end up performing as the team hoped.

Meanwhile, in today’s baseball action, I see that Andy Pettitte won again and is now 3-0.  If he is really and truly off Vitamin S for good, it’s great to see a soon-to-be 41 year old continuing to flummox major league hitters.

It will be interesting to see how Hall of Fame voters treat Pettitte however many years from now.  On the one hand, his numbers are clearly Hall of Fame worthy: he’s almost certain to finish with more than 250 career wins, a terrific winning percentage and an excellent post-season record for numerous World Champions.  On the other hand, he’s an admitted steroids/PEDs abuser.

However, he copped to his PED use a lot faster than most of his fellow cheats, told a pretty good story about why he did it (trying to recover quickly from an injury to help his team, blah, blah, blah), and even fingered another reputed and more significant steroids cheat, all-time great Roger Clemens.  That might buy Pettitte some sympathy from Hall of Fame voters — Americans, as a group, love to see the mighty cut down to size, but we’re awfully forgiving when said mighties abjectly admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness — it has a lot to do with our Puritan (read broadly) heritage.

Meanwhile, Roy Halladay and the Phillies beat the Cardinals today 8-2 in a game called on account of rain after six and half innings.  I wonder if umpires are more likely to shorten games on account of rain when the game is a blow out?

My guess is yes, umpires do.  They are human, and I can’t imagine that they don’t take into account the score and the inning when deciding if it’s rained long enough to call the game.  If the game was 3-2 after six and a half, I suspect the umpires would have waited longer to try to get more of the game into the record books.

Has anyone done any research on this question?  If not, it would make an interesting research topic for the SABRly minded.

Meanwhile, I have no idea whether the Pirates will contend this year, but at least they’re trying.  Right now, the Bucs’ decisions to take on A. J. Burnett’s (albeit at a steep discount) and Wandy Rodriguez’s salaries last year looks brilliant.  Today Rodriguez completely shut down the Braves, the hottest team in baseball; and Burnett has a 2.63 ERA and leads the NL in strikeouts.

East Asia Notes

Pitchers Vicente Padilla and Jo Jo Reyes are headed to Japan and South Korea, respectively.

The right-handed Padilla has been signed by the SoftBank Hawks for a reported $3.25 million for the 2013 season.  Padilla is now 35 years old, but was reasonably successful as a middle reliever for the Boston Red Sox last year.

One thing that will be interesting to follow with Padilla is what NPB players think of his head-hunting ways.  Padilla has a well deserved reputation for throwing inside (he’s hit 109 batters in his major league career, which is third most among active pitchers).  This caused a lot of friction with his teammates particularly during his time with the Texas Rangers.

Teammates are a lot more hostile to pitchers who throw inside in the American League, since pitchers don’t bat in the Junior Circuit, meaning retaliation is always against the pitcher’s position-playing teammates.  The Hawks play in NPB’s Pacific League which, like the AL, uses the DH.

Meanwhile, Reyes is signing with the SK Wyverns, apparently as a replacement for fellow leftie Doug Slaten, who signed with the Wyverns earlier in the off-season but then apparently had second thoughts about going to South Korea for the year.

Reyes has never pitched well in the majors despite many opportunities (he has a career 6.05 ERA in more than 300 major league innings pitched), but he pitched well in the high minors in 2007 through 2009 and again in 2012.  The odds are good he’ll be successful pitching in the KBO.

As a final note, myKBO.net recently posted photos of Hyun-Jin Ryu in his new Dodger uniform.  I have to say that Ryu looks like he needs to lose at least ten pounds around the middle.

It’s a reality that pitchers don’t really need to be in great shape to be effective pitchers.  However, given all the money that the Dodgers committed to acquire Ryu’s services and get him signed, I’m sure that they’d like to see him work on his conditioning.

Former Major Leaguer Enzo Hernandez Passes

Former major leaguer Enzo Hernandez died today at age 63 at his home in Venezuela of an apparent suicide. If I had to guess, I would say that he probably had serious health problems that led to his sad ending.

To the extent that anyone remembers Hernandez as a major league baseball player today, it is as a result of his utter futility at driving in runs as the rookie shortstop for the 1971 San Diego Padres.  At least, that is what first came to mind when I read about his passing this evening.

Hernandez drove in only 12 runs that year in 618 plate appearances.  In 549 at-bats he had twelve extra base hits, nine doubles and three triples.  He hit .222 on the season with a .250 slugging percentage.

The only other regular player to drive in only twelve runs in a season is the aptly named Goat Anderson, who in his only major league season with the 1907 Pittsburgh Pirates, drove in twelve in 510 plate appearances.  Goat only hit .206 and slugged only .225 that year.  He had only five extra base hits: three doubles and triple and home run.  At least, Goat reached this ignominious achievement in the Dead Ball Era and in more than 100 plate appearances fewer than Enzo Hernandez.

One thing to be said both for Enzo and Goat — in spite of their complete inability to hit the ball with authority, they both got on base a lot more than you’d ever expect from such weak batters.  Enzo walked 54 times in 1971, and Goat walked an astounding 80 times in 1907.  Both stole over twenty bases, and both scored a lot more runs than they drove in: Enzo 58, Goat 73.

Hernandez went on to play in eight major league seasons.  While he never got 618 plate appearances or 549 ABs in a season again, he drove in more than 12 runs four times, peaking at 34 RBIs in 1974, his only other season in which he played more than 120 games.

Hernandez must have been a pretty good glove man at short, given the fact that he finished his eight year career with a .224 batting average and .550 OPS in more than 2,600 plate appearances.  However, Enzo never led the National League in any primary fielding category, and his 33 errors in 1971 tied Giants’ shortstop Chris Speier, also a rookie, for the most in MLB that year.

Perhaps Hernandez’s relatively long career says more about the ineptitude of the early 1970′s Padres than it does about his defensive abilities.

The Best and Worst Hitters’ Parks in MLB 2013

Last summer I discovered that espn.com provides stats for what it calls “park factor”, which for purposes of this post means the ratio between the number of runs scored at a ballpark in any given season divided by the number of runs scored by said ballpark’s occupant (and its opponents) in away games that same season.  I wrote a post last June which evaluates each park’s park factor for the five years ending with the 2011 season.

As we approach the 2013 season (and the 2012 stats have long been in), it seems like a good time to update my earlier post incorporating the 2012 season.  Without further ado, here are the average park factors for all major league ballparks over the last six season (or less for the five ball parks that have opened more recently).

1.  Coors Field (Rockies) 1.301

2.  The Ballpark at Arlington (Rangers) 1.148

3.  Chase Field (Diamondbacks) 1.134

4.  Fenway Park (Red Sox) 1.131

5.  U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox) 1.111

6.  Wrigley Field (Cubs) 1.086

7.  Camden Yards (Orioles) 1.080

8.  New Yankee Stadium (2009-2012) 1.066 [Old Yankee Stadium, 2004-2008, 1.002]

9.  Great American Ball Park (Reds) 1.057.

10.  Comerica Park (Tigers) 1.044.

11.  Kauffman Stadium (Royals) 1.018

12.  Rogers Center (Blue Jays) 1.010

12.  Miller Park (Brewers) 1.010

14.  Citizens Bank Ballpark (Phillies) 1.008

15.  Marlins Park (2012) 1.005  [Sun Life Stadium, 2007-2011, 1.038]

16.  Nationals Park (2008-2012) 0.998 [RFK Stadium, 2005-2007, 0.892]

17.  Minute Maid Park (Astros) 0.986

18.  Target Field (Twins, 2010-2012) 0.983 [Mall of America Field (the Metrodome), 2005-2009, 0.966]

19.  Turner Field (Braves) 0.978

20.  Progressive Field (Indians) 0.960

21.  Angels Stadium 0.939

22.  PNC Park (Pirates) 0.936

22.  Busch Stadium (Cardinals) 0.936

24.  Oakland Coliseum (A’s) 0.919

25.  AT&T Park (Giants) 0.917

26.  Dodger Stadium 0.915

27.  Citi Field (Mets, 2009-2012) 0.904 [Shea Stadium, 2004-2008, 0.886]

28.  Tropicana Field (Rays) 0.889

29.  Safeco Field (Mariners) 0.864

30.  Petco Park (Padres) 0.808

The rankings didn’t change much from last year.  Among last year’s ten best hitters’ parks, U.S. Cellular Park, where the White Sox play, was apparently a great place to hit in 2012, moving it up two slots.  New Yankee Stadium was apparently not a great place to hit, moving it down two slots. Coors Field improved on its status as far and away the best hitters’ park in MLB.

The Marlins’ new park, which looked like a great place to hit in late June of last year, turned out to be only a little better than average for the full season — we’ll have to see how it plays over the next few seasons.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium moved up two slots, and the Phillies’ Citizens’ Bank Park fell two slots.  The Astros’ Minute Maid Park also fell two slots.  The Twins’ Target Field was a hitters’ park for the first time in its three year history, jumping it up four slots.  The Pirates and Giants and their respective opponents scored a lot more runs on the road in 2012, causing both PNC Park and AT&T Park to drop three slots.

With another year in the books, the Mets’ Citi Field is developing into as much of a pitchers’ park as the old Shea Stadium.  San Diego’s Petco Park remains the worst place to ply one’s trade as a major league hitter, but Seattle’s Safeco Field narrowed the gap considerably.

San Francisco Giants to Sign Japanese 2Bman Kensuke Tanaka; Eric Hacker Likely Going to South Korea

The San Francisco Chronicle today reports that the Giants intend to sign soon-to-be 32 year old second baseman Kensuke Tanaka to a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training.  Tanaka will be competing for a utility role with the Giants after spending the last seven seasons as a starter for NPB’s Nippon Ham Fighters.

I wish I could say I was more excited about the signing.  Given Tanaka’s age, he should be on the down-slope of his career, and I don’t really think he was major league material to begin with.

Tanaka didn’t hit for power in Japan, so he will have no power playing in MLB.  His career NPB .286 batting average is good, but his career NPB .342 OBP probably translates to between .310 and .320 in MLB.  He was a base-stealing threat as recently as 2010, but stole only 13 bases in 22 attempts in 2012.

The best thing to be said for the deal is that it’s a minor league deal which probably only pays Tanaka about $1 million if he makes the major league club, so it’s extremely low risk.

Meanwhile, Eric Hacker, the ace of the 2012 AAA Fresno Grizzlies, reportedly in the final stages of signing with the expansion NC Dinos of South Korea’s KBO.  The soon-to-be 30 year old right-hander went 12-6 with a 4.01 ERA for the Grizzlies last year and 0-1 with a 5.59 ERA in four appearances with the Giants.  Hacker also had cups of coffee with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2009 and the Minnesota Twins in 2011.

Hacker should pitch well in the KBO, but I am a little surprised by the signing since the NC Dinos had already signed Americans Adam Wilk and Charles Shirek this off-season.  My understanding was that KBO teams can only have two foreign players on their respective rosters.

However, MyKBO.net reported last June that the Dinos will be allowed to have three foreign players on their 2013 and 2014 rosters while other KBO teams will still be limited to two.  If nothing else, the Dinos should have better pitching than most expansion teams with the signings of Hacker, Wilk and Shirek.

Not Feeling Too Sorry for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens

I can’t say that I feel any sadness about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens each failing to get even 40% of the vote in their year of Hall of Fame eligibility.  The sportswriters are rightfully sending a message that neither deserves to be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer due to the steroids taint.  I would have voted the same way.

In my mind, the big question is how the electors will vote next year and in the years after that. There’s no doubt that Bonds’ and Clemens’ on-field performances were better than merely Hall of Fame worthy.  There’s no reasonable way to conclude that these players don’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame because of their purported steroid use, while numerous other players from generations past have been elected in spite of similar conduct and worse.

For example, most of the Hall-of-Famers from the 1960′s, ’70′s and ’80′s used performance enhancing drugs in the form of greenies (amphetamine pills) and other stimulants during their playing careers.  MLB condoned or at least turned a blind eye to stimulant use by players for more than 40 years until the fall-out from the steroid scandal forced MLB and the players’ union to agree to a ban.

Ty Cobb once claimed that during his playing career he chased down a man who tried to rob him on the street and catching him several blocks away beat the attempted robber to death.  No effort has been made to throw Cobb out of the Hall of Fame.

The same goes for Cap Anson who today is remembered as much for being the poster boy for separate-but-equal in professional baseball when he refused to allow his team to take the field against an African American opponent as he is for being the first player to accumulate 3,000 hits in his career.  Again, no one is suggesting we throw Anson out of the Hall of Fame, even though MLB’s 60+ plus year de facto ban on players of African decent is a far bigger stain on baseball history than players trying to get an edge by taking performance enhancing drugs.

In short, Bonds and Clemens ultimately deserve to be in the Hall of Fame based on their on-field performances and the degree to which they dominated the game even in an era when a lot of players were using performance enhancing drugs.  If their 15 years of eligibility pass without their being elected, that would be a real travesty.

Samsung Lions Sign Rick Van Den Hurk

The Samsung Lions of South Korea’s KBO just signed Rick van den Hurk, a 27 year old (turns 28 in May) Dutch right-hander who most recently pitched in the majors for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Once again the KBO appears to have signed a player who would have been signed by an NPB team in years past.

Van den Hurk has not been an effective major league pitcher.  While he has major league stuff, he does not have major league command.  His career major league ERA is 6.08 and his career pitching line is 183.2 IP, 204 hits, 33 HRs and 96 walks allowed and 179 Ks.

I have never seen van den Hurk pitch, but based on his numbers I surmise that he is a pitcher with good stuff but without major league command.  He falls behind in the count, comes in over the middle of the plate and gets creamed.  However, his high strike out rate suggests he’s got something going for him.

As I’ve been saying all off-season, I’m surprised a Japanese NPB team didn’t sign him first.  He’s relatively young, has considerable MLB experience and apparently has good stuff.  In Japan, where the talent is a little lower and the strike zone a little bigger, he could be a star like Marc Kroon, another 4-A pitcher with major league stuff but insufficient command, who became the top closer in Japan for a number of years with the Yomiuri Giants.

I will be very surprised if van den Hurk is not successful in KBO.  The only thing likely to slow him down would be his inability to adjust to living in South Korea.

Buster Posey’s Next Contract

Here’s a great piece from Matt Swartz on mlbtraderumors.com regarding his prediction that Buster Posey will make $5.9 million through the arbitration process in 2013.  Swartz readily admits that projections are tough because few players have Posey’s resume: one Rookie of the Year and one MVP award, two World Series titles, but fewer career plate appearances than most top players eligible for arbitration for the first time because of his 2011 injury.

I, however, will be very surprised if Posey and the Giants get anywhere near an actual arbitration hearing.  Instead, all signs suggest that Posey will sign a multi-year deal this off-season.

As far as I am aware, the relationship between Posey and the Giants is one big love-fest.  It is hard to imagine how it could be otherwise.

Posey is a franchise player, who, as they say in baseball, wouldn’t say sh** if he had a mouthful.  He has the awards, the World Series rings, and he’s still hasn’t reached his 26th birthday.  That’s the kind of player any team would want to lock up, at least through his remaining arbitration seasons.

Meanwhile, it seems highly likely that Posey is just as thrilled to be a Giant.  Two World Series rings in three seasons is something most players can only dream about.

Also, the Giants have a history of compensating Posey.  When the Giants selected Posey with the fifth pick of the 2008 Draft, they gave him a $6.2 million signing bonus, the largest signing bonus in Giants’ history and the largest signing bonus given to any player selected in the 2008 Draft.  [Pedro Alvarez, who was selected with the second pick, eventually re-negotiated his deal with the Pirates for a little more after he had initially agreed to less than what the Giants gave Posey].

The Giants have also given Posey relatively generous pre-arbitration raises, although Posey has earned them and more.

In short, it seems like all the pieces are in place for a deal similar to last off-season’s multi-year deal with Matt Cain: a deal in which Posey gets slightly (but only slightly) less than he’d get on the open market, but still guarantees to make him a very, very wealthy man.

South Korea’s KBO Growing Fast

I’ve already written about how South Korea’s KBO is growing by leaps and bounds — the eight-team league drew seven million fans in 2012 for the first time; it was the fourth year in a row KBO set a new attendance record; and South Korea’s 2008 Olympics Gold Medal and 2009 World Baseball Classic (“WBC”) second place finish have shot baseball past soccer as South Korea’s most popular team sport.  Yet, I’m embarrassed to admit that until today I was unaware that the KBO is expanding.  KBO will add a ninth team, the NC Dinos in 2013 and a tenth team, as yet unnamed, to bring the league back to an even number of teams in 2015.

The NC Dinos will play in Changwon, a city in the far south of South Korea with a 2010 population of nearly 1.1 million.  Changwon is not far from Busan, home of the Lotte Giants, KBO’s most popular and successful franchise.  Clearly, the NC Dinos are hoping that some of the Lotte Giants’ magic will rub off on them.  Busan is a much better city, but the Dinos will have an immediate rivalry with KBO’s most popular team, which can only be good for the Dinos’ box office.

The Dinos wasted no time signing two American pitchers, Charles Shirek and Adam Wilk, whom I wrote about a week ago.  [KBO has a salary cap for foreign players of $300,000 per season, but reports are that KBO teams now routinely violate the cap to sign better American pitchers such as Wilk, Dana Eveland, Doug Slaten and in 2011 Justin Germano, to name only a few.  Bringing in the best available talent costs money, and with interest in the KBO exploding, the wealthier KBO teams are, not surprisingly, playing fast and loose with the rules.  Also, since KBO teams are limited to two foreign players each season, a salary cap makes little sense.]

However, baseball owners being baseball owners regardless of the country or continent, it took a push for KBO owners to agree to adding a tenth team, as obvious as such a move seems after expanding to nine teams in light of the obvious scheduling considerations.  The Korea Professional Baseball Players’ Association threatened to boycott various events, including the 2012 Gold Glove Awards and the 2013 All-Star Game, unless the KBO owners agreed to expand the league to ten teams.  That got the ball rolling.

The as yet unnamed tenth team will spend two years playing in KBO’s Futures League (which is actually two six-team minor leagues that develop talent for the eight-team Korea Baseball Championship League, which I have been referring to as the KBO), just as the NC Dinos did in 2011 and 2012.

P.S.  The SK Wyverns signed long and lean left-hander Chris Seddon.  Seddon will be 29 years old in 2013, and he’s yet another pitcher that more likely would have signed with a Japanese NPB team in years past based on his North American professional record, except perhaps for his unfortunately high home run rate.

P.P.S  A shout-out to myKBO.net, where most of the information for this post originated.