Blink and You’ve Missed Them

I got real enjoyment following Jared Koenig‘s recent major league shot with the Oakland A’s. I had noticed Koenig back in 2018 when he had a big season in the fly-by-night Independent-A Pacific Association, truly the bottom of the professional baseball barrel. The start of the Covid pandemic in the early Spring of 2020 killed off the Pacific Association after six seasons of play, apparently for good.

Koenig struck out 140 batters in 96.2 IP for the 2018 San Rafael Pacifics, which earned him a promotion to the Frontier League in 2019, where he struck out 133 batters in 104.1 IP and posted an excellent 2.24 ERA. He continued his terrific 2019 campaign with six well-pitched starts in the winter Australian League.

The Frontier League and the Australian League are still a long, long way from the Majors, but they are at least leagues where someone might take notice if you play as well as Koenig had. The Oakland A’s clearly took notice because they signed him in December 2019 and brought him back in 2021 after the Covid pandemic prevented Koenig from playing in 2020. It certainly did not hurt that Koenig had once been a 35th round draft pick by the Chicago White Sox out of an Arizona JC in 2014, even if he hadn’t pitched well enough subsequently at four-year schools to get drafted again.

Koenig had a strong season at AA Midland in 2021, and started the 2022 season at AAA Las Vegas, a tough place to pitch. In eight starts and nine appearances, Koenig posted a 2.21 ERA and a pitching line of 53 IP, 39 hits, 4 HR and 15 BB allowed and 61 K, earning a shot in the worst-in-the-AL A’s’ starting rotation.

Koenig was not surprisingly overmatched in his first taste of MLB action at age 28. Although the A’s won two of his four starts, Koenig had only one effective start and 6.38 ERA. He did earn a major league victory, which I am certain made all the toil for peanuts Koenig went through to earn that moment worth it in his own mind. His peripheral numbers suggested he needs more time working on his pitching at AAA, and the A’s sent him down on June 26th.

2022 has been a great year for the Pecos League’s business model. The Pecos League is a pay-to-play league where players have to pay to submit an application and then get paid a stipend of $550 for a compressed 11-week season. That’s $50 a week, and not enough to feed a hungry young athlete.

The Pecos League is for undrafted college players not impressive enough to sign contracts with the better and more established Indy-Leagues (the Atlantic League, the American Association and the Frontier). The business models of the best Indy-A leagues still requires each team to fill at least a third (usually more) of their rosters with players with no or only one season of prior professional baseball experience in order to stay below each team’s salary cap amount. Thus, the players in the Pecos League are all guys who just want to give professional baseball a try even if they have to pay to do it.

By my count, at least five players who played in the Pecos League’s first ten seasons from 2011 to 2020 have subsequently made the majors. Jon Edwards (2011) has probably had the most successful pro career of anyone starting his career in the Pecos League. He pitched 49 games in parts of four major league seasons, enough to earn his MLB pension, and then pitched two years in Japan for NPB’s Hanshin Tigers, where my sources say he earned a total of 160,000,000 yen, which amounted to almost $1.5M when Edwards earned it in 2020-2021.

Chris Smith, who pitched all of four games for the Blue Jays in 2017, also pitched in the Pecos League in 2011, after one unsuccessful relief appearance in the Frontier League in 2010.

April 2021 White Sox phenom Yermin Mercedes played in the Pecos League in 2014. Mercedes had played three years in the Dominican Summer League as a Washington Nationals prospect, but failed to stick and used the Pecos League for his age 21 season as a way to get more professional experience and keep himself in the eyes of MLB scouts. It worked, as the Baltimore Orioles signed him to a contract in 2015.

Jared Koenig pitched in the Pecos League in 2017, pitching well enough to earn a five-start look from the American Association’s Salina Stockade later in the summer 2017 season. The best performers in the Pecos League typically get shots from American Association teams as soon the 11-week Pecos League season ends. Most do not stick in the American Association on their first attempts, as the jump in competition is steep, probably the equivalent of jumping from the Dominican Summer League directly to a full-season MLB-system A league. That’s how Koenig ended up pitching in the Pacific Association.

However, Koenig is not the only 2017 Pecos League/Pacific Association pitcher to pitch in the major leagues this year. Logan Gillaspie pitched 10.1 innings in 11 relief appearances for the Orioles this season in May and June before the O’s sent him down to AAA Norfolk on June 18th.

Gillaspie’s 4.35 ERA for the Orioles wasn’t bad, but his peripheral numbers were much less impressive. However, Gillaspie has pitched well in 19.1 AA and AAA innings this year, and, like Koenig, could return to the Show later this year if he can continue to pitch effectively at the AAA level.

Gillaspie was only 20 when he played in the Pecos League, apparently coming out of a JC in Oxnard. Although he also failed to stick in a brief opportunity with the Salina Stockade and finished the season in the Pacific Association, he had the advantage of being younger than most of the players coming out of four-year schools in the Pecos League and received a contract with the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization before the 2018 season began. There is no substitute for tender age when it comes to getting a minor league contract from an MLB organization.

For a league like the Pecos League, having two veterans reach the major leagues in the same season is pure public relations gold. The league can continue to pay its players peanuts for years to come on the proven-not-impossible (but still extremely unlikely) dream that playing in the Pecos could be a stepping stone to the majors.

Other than Koenig and Gillaspie, the only other Pacific Association veteran to reach the majors that I could find is now-former Tampa Bay Ray Chris Mazza. After being released by the Marlins’ organization, Mazza, a Diablo Valley product, was able to turn effective pitching for the San Rafael Pacifics in 2018 into a contract with the Mets’ organization and reached the majors only a year later.

Mazza pitched briefly for the Mets, Red Sox and Rays over the last four major league seasons, but the Rays released him on June 22nd. At age 32, Mazza may have to return to the Indy-A leagues if he wants to keep his professional career going. At least, he has earned his MLB pension with more than a year of credited major league service.

The Pacific Association was only able to attract about half a dozen former major league players in its six years of operation, perhaps most famously Jose Canseco when he was in his early 50’s.

As a final note, the San Rafael Pacifics joined the Pecos League as a franchise for the 2021 season, and the Pecos league also has a franchise in Martinez, California, where I saw my one and only Pacific League game in 2018.

Slugging It Out in Taiwan: The Best Foreign Hitters in CPBL History

This the first revised iteration of a post on the most successful foreign hitters in the history of Taiwan’s CPBL. The CPBL recognizes stats from a rival league, the Taiwan Major League (“TML”), which operated for six years before merging with the CPBL after the 2002 season. However, the CPBL does not publish TML stats and neither does baseball-reference.com.

Nearly all of the best foreign hitters in CPBL history played in the CPBL in its early years between 1990 and 2005, and many of the best foreign players jumped to the TML for more money. This makes it hard for someone like me with no working knowledge of Mandarin Chinese to find the TML stats. I have now revised this post based on Google Translate versions of Taiwanese wikipedia pages.

After about 2010, CPBL teams, following serious contraction in the number of teams, quite reasonably decided that foreign starting pitchers were more valuable to them than position players and relief pitchers, in no small part because it was easier for the foreign pitchers they signed to adjust to CPBL baseball right away than it was for foreign position players to do so.

With the expansion Wei Chuan Dragons starting CPBL major league play in 2021, creating a need for 25% more major league position players, CPBL teams all signed foreign position players for the 2022 season, although none of them has had success so far. The TSG Hawks will start CPBL major league play in 2024, meaning the CPBL will need to find another roster-full of major league position players.

Rob over at CPBL STATS has opined many times that he still thinks it doesn’t make sense for teams to sign foreign position players because pitchers are more of sure thing of proven value. I think it makes sense for CPBL teams to sign position players now, at least to play at the minor league level. I also think teams will have to sign position players when the TSG Hawks start major league play because you can’t add 50% more position players in five years and not have a serious diminution of talent unless you expand the player base beyond domestic Taiwanese position players.

Without further ado, here are my lists.

Batting Average (1,900 At-Bat Minimum)

1. Sandy Guerrero .333 (1,984 At-Bats)
2. Luis Iglesias .318
3. Angel Gonzalez .314 (1,964 At-Bats)
4. Francisco Laureano .306
5. Leo Garcia .300
6. Sil Campusano .290

Panamanian Luis Iglesias and Dominicans Sandy Guerrero, Francisco Laureano, Leo Garcia, Sil Campusano and Angel Gonzalez are the only foreign players to reach my 1,900 career at-bats threshold with certainty. Luis Iglesias had the most productive Taiwanese baseball career of any foreign hitter. He played seven years in the CPBL for the now-defunct Mercuries Tigers and then finished his Taiwanese career with two seasons in the TML. His career batting average in the CPBL of .318 matches his career Taiwan batting average, so it seems clear that the level of play in the TML was roughly equal to the CPBL, thanks mainly to allowing each team to sign a lot more foreign players than CPBL roster limits.

Iglesias had a good year with the bat in the Class A Sally League in 1987 at age 20, but his offensive production dropped in the Class A Florida State League in 1988; and his MLB organization, the Phillies, dropped him. He played for one of the last independent teams in an MLB-system minor league, the Miami Miracle, in 1989 and then signed with the Mercuries Tigers for the CPBL’s inaugural 1990 season at the still young age of 23. He did nothing but hit in the CPBL’s early days, while splitting his time between SS and 3B. His .331 batting average led the league in 1991.

Francisco Laureano, Leo Garcia and Angel Gonzalez played five successful seasons in the CPBL starting in 1992 and then played for two seasons in the TML. Leo Garcia got cups of coffee with the Cincinnati Reds in 1987 and 1988 and was the Reds’ starting AAA centerfielder for seven years before joining the CPBL’s Mercuries Tigers in 1992.

Angel Gonzalez led the CPBL with batting averages of .360 and .354 in 1994 and 1995. Sandy Guerrero played four years in the CPBL followed by two in the TML.

Sil Campusano played briefly for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies before playing three seasons in the CPBL followed by three seasons in the TML.

Dominican Luis De Los Santos batted .362 across three CPBL seasons from 1994-1996 for the Brother Elephants. His .375 batting average led the league in 1996, and he finished second in batting average in each of 1994 and 1995. His CPBL performance earned De Los Santos an NPB shot in 1997, where he flopped for the Yomiuri Giants; but he returned to Taiwan in 1998, where he led the TML with a .357 batting average. De Los Santos batted .353 over five seasons in Taiwan (634 hits in 1,796 AB). He also played parts of three MLB seasons for the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers before going to Taiwan and had a big year in the KBO at age 34 after he left Taiwan.

Except for De Los Santos, all of these players played up the middle, providing a great deal of value to their Taiwanese teams. De Los Santos could just plain hit.

Home Runs

1. Luis Inglesias 164
2. Sil Campusano 96
3. Luis De Los Santos 88
4. Leo Garcia 77
5. Corey Powell 75
6. George Hinshaw 68
7. Tilson Brito 66
8. Francisco Laureano 65
9. Angel Gonzalez 64
10. Ted Wood 61

Luis Iglesias hit 120 CPBL HR, including a record-setting 31 in 1996, and 44 HR in the TML. He also hit the first Taiwan Series home run, although the Mercuries Tigers lost the game 2-1 to the original Wei Chuan Dragons.

Corey Powell hit 25 HR in each of his three seasons in the TML.

George Hinshaw played briefly for the San Diego Padres and spent a season with NPB’s Chunichi Dragons before starting a four-year CBPL career at age 34 in 1994. He may also have played a season or two in the TML.

Tilson Brito played briefly for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Oakland A’s before having much greater success in South Korea’s KBO and the CPBL. His 33 HR in 2007 set a new CPBL record.

Ted Wood had three cups of coffee with the San Francisco Giants and Montreal Expos before playing three seasons with the Brother Elephants starting in 1997. He led the CPBL with a lusty .373 batting average in 1997. His strong performance got him a shot in the KBO in 2000, where he finished his pro career.

RBIs

1. Luis Iglesias 550
2. Luis De Los Santos 365
3. Sil Campusano 348
4. Francisco Laureano 346
5. Leo Garcia 316
6. Sandy Guerrero 289
7. Angel Gonzalez 272
8. George Hinshaw 246
9. Ted Wood 241
10. Tilson Brito 234

Runs Scored

1. Luis Iglesias 436
2. Sil Campusano 382
3. Frank Laureano 334
4. Leo Garcia 326
5. Sandy Guerrero 308
6. Luis De Los Santos 297
7. Angel Gonzalez 291
8. Ted Wood 207
9. Corey Powell 207

Stolen Bases

1. Bernie Tatis 147
2. Sil Campusano 122
3. Lonnie Goldberg 110
4. Angel Gonzalez 100
5. Leo Garcia 84
6. Cesar Hernandez 82
7. Freddy Tiburcio 68
8. Sandy Guerrero 67

Bernie Tatis played parts of four seasons in the CPBL but only regularly in 1997 and 1998, when he stole 71 and then 65 bases at the ages of 35 and 36. Clearly, he was great at reading pitchers’ moves and getting a good jump.

Lonnie Goldberg played three seasons in the TML after playing in the Independent-A Northeast League.

Cesar Hernandez is another former Cincinnati Reds outfielder. He signed with the Uni-President Lions in 1995 at the still young age of 28 and played four years for the Uni-Lions.

OF Freddy Tiburcio played six seasons for the Brother Elephants starting in 1990. His .318 batting average was second best in the circuit in 1991.

As you can see, Tilson Brito was the only foreign hitter to have much of a CPBL career after 2005, although former Boston Red Sox 3B Wilton Veras did finish 3rd in 2009 with a .360 batting average.

After 2010, foreign hitters nearly disappeared from the CPBL. Jim Negrich in 2014 and 2015 was the last foreign position player to play regularly in the CPBL until 2021, when the expansion Wei Chuan Dragons got their best offensive production from former MLBer Rosell Herrera. However, Herrera missed a lot of games with injuries and didn’t hit with much power, and the Dragons elected not to re-sign him for 2022.

In the early days of the CPBL, many foreign hitters had one or two big seasons. The best was Jay Kirkpatrick‘s 1998 campaign for the Sinon Bulls. He was the CPBL’s first Triple Crown winner, batting .387 with 31 HR and 101 RBIs, a feat not matched until current Nippon Ham Fighter Wang Po-Jung won the Triple Crown in 2017.

Also, in 1998, 37 year old former Houston Astro Ty Gainey finished second in all the Triple Crown categories — .376 batting average, 21 HR and 83 RBI.

Former Milwaukee Brewer Juan Castillo led the CPBL with a .326 batting average in 1992.

3B/OF Melvin Mora had the best MLB career after playing in the CPBL. After becoming a minor league free agent after seven seasons in the Astros’ system and coming off a light-hitting season at AAA in 1997, Mora apparently did not receive a minor league contract offer to his liking, because he ended up signing with the Mercuries Tigers to start the 1998 season. He batted .335 for the Mercuries Tigers in 44 games and was signed by New York Mets in late July, going on to greater MLB success as a Baltimore Oriole.

Given the late in career improvement as a hitter and the era in which Mora played, one must suspect that Vitamin S may have shot his career forward, as it did for the next player. Before going on to hit five MLB HR and 357 NPB HR, Alex Cabrera batted .325 with 18 HR in 1999 for the Chinatrust Whales, Cabrera’s age 27 season.

Former Red Sox and Oriole slugger Sam Horn blasted 31 HR in 1997, setting the all-time TML record.

No article on foreign hitters in the CPBL would be complete without mention of Manny Ramirez‘s half season in 2013 for the EDA Rhinos. The possible future Hall of Famer (PEDs) batted .352 and clubbed eight HR in 49 games before returning for a last shot in AAA baseball. The Rhinos offered to double his monthly salary to $50,000 if he would stay, because he had had a tremendous impact on CBPL attendance. However, Manny was just trying to get some quality professional at-bats to show that he still had something left in the tank at age 41 since his real goal was to return to MLB.

Slugging It Out in South Korea: The Best Foreign Hitters in KBO History, 2021-2022

This is the post-2021 regular season update of a post I originally published back in 2015.  South Korea’s KBO only began allowing foreign players in 1998, and it’s is a young league, starting play only in 1982.  This means the records for foreign players are very much in play almost every season.

Initially, KBO teams brought in mostly hitters; and the foreigners, at least at first, hit a lot of home runs.  As the league improved, KBO teams began to realize after about 2005 that foreign pitchers were worth more to them than the hitters — so much so that by 2012 and 2013, there were no foreign hitters in the league at all.

KBO teams expanded the roster space for foreigners from two to three beginning with the 2014 season, as the league was undergoing expansion, with the requirement that one of the three foreigners be a position player/hitter. Foreign hitters have been back in the league the last seven seasons and initially took advantage of what was until the 2019 season an extreme hitters’ league. However, relatively few have lasted long enough in the KBO to challenge the foreign player records set before 2010.

Batting Average  (2,000 at-bats)

1.     Jay Davis      .313

2.     Tyrone Woods   .294

3.     Tilson Brito    .292

Mel Rojas, Jr. .321 (in 1,971 at-bats)

Cliff Brumbaugh .299 (in 1,971 at-bats)

Mel Rojas, Jr. had a KBO career batting average of .321 in 1,971 at-bats through the end of the 2020 season. He had a tremendous 2020 season (.347/.417/.680 slash line), after which he signed a two-year deal to play with the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s NPB. The first year with Hanshin was dreadful (.217/.282/.381 in 60 games). I expect Rojas to hit better in 2022, but there is still a good chance he’ll return to the KBO in 2023. Brumbaugh turned a big year in the KBO in 2004 into two seasons in NPB, but was back in the KBO in 2007.

Hits

1.      Jay Davis   979

2.     Tilson Brito  683

3.     Tyrone Woods  655

4. Mel Rojas, Jr. 633

5. Jamie Romak 610

Jay Davis had far and away the best career of any foreign hitter in the KBO, with Tyrone Woods as the only other player in the conversation.  Davis, Woods and Brito are the only three foreign players to reach 2,000 career KBO at-bats so far.

The problem is that very few foreigners have had long careers in the KBO.  Until the last ten years, when increased revenues made bigger salaries possible, the foreigners who played in KBO were clearly a cut below the foreign players who signed with Japanese NPB teams.  They tended not to maintain their initial KBO performance levels for long — three full seasons was and still is a long KBO career for a foreigner — or they moved on to greener NPB pastures or back to MLB.

Home Runs

1.     Tyrone Woods   174

2.     Jay Davis           167

3.     Jamie Romak     155

4. Mel Rojas, Jr. 132

5.     Eric Thames      124

6.     Cliff Brumbaugh  116

7.     Tilson Brito         112

8.     Karim Garcia      103

9.     Felix Jose            95

In the early days (late 1990’s and early 2000’s), KBO teams paid foreigners to hit home runs.  The most prolific was Tyrone Woods, who blasted 174 dingers over five KBO seaons and then moved on to the NPB, where he blasted 240 HRs in six seasons.  Woods never played even one game in the major leagues, and there are some reasons to believe that PEDs may have had something to do with his tremendous Asian performance, at least by the time he reached NPB.

Eric Thames was the best of the hitters to join the KBO since the foreign player roster expansion in 2014 (at least until Mel Rojas), and he was the caliber of player who would have signed with an NPB team during the earlier era when KBO teams were signing foreign sluggers.  As I predicted in October 2016, Thames did return to MLB (I actually predicted he’d sign with either an MLB or NPB team that off-season — the Yomiuri Giants signed Thames for 2021, but he got hurt and barely played at all in Japan), and his contract was a steal for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Cliff Brumbaugh played briefly for the Rangers and Rockies in 2001 before starting a successful seven year career in South Korea and Japan.  You probably remember Karim Garcia and Felix Jose, who both had significant major leagues careers, and you may even remember Tilson Brito, who played in 92 MLB games in 1996-1997 for the Blue Jays and the A’s.

Jamie Romak has probably played his final season in the KBO. He is now 36, slashed .225/.340/.425 in 2021 and missed the last two weeks of the regular season with an injury, and his $900K-to-$1.15M salary is at the high end in the 2021 salary-retrenching KBO.

Runs Scored

1.     Jay Davis    538

2.     Tyrone Woods   412

RBIs

1.     Jay Davis   591

2.     Tyrone Woods   510

3T. Mel Rojas, Jr. 409

3T. Jamie Romak 409

As you can see from the above numbers, the KBO records for foreign hitters are ready to be broken in all categories, because so relatively little has been accomplished by foreign hitters to date.  It’s mainly a matter of whether any of the post-2014 crop of foreign hitters can hang around long enough to add their names to my lists as the seasons pass.

The KBO imposed a $1M salary cap on new foreign players (or foreign players moving to a new team) a couple of years ago. This will impact the quality of the foreign players KBO teams can sign and makes it easier for better paying NPB to filch the best foreign hitters like Rojas and Jerry Sands.

The Classic Baseball Injury

I just read that Milwaukee Brewers’ pitcher Devin Williams will likely miss the post-season after breaking his pitching hand punching a wall. That is the classic ballplayer’s injury if ever there was one.

Some teams try to teach their young pitchers to punch things with their non-pitching hand if they need to blow off steam, but it is against human nature not to punch with your dominant hand when you lash out in frustration or anger.

I’m over 50 now and have been following major league baseball closely since 1978. One thing I’ve noticed is that I may get older but the major league players remain young men who never stop making the same mistakes as each new generation succeeds the last one. Young, cock-strong pitchers will always break their hands against walls, at least once in a while. Some young players will always make mistakes that major leaguers really shouldn’t make, even when they are under 25. Others will make really bad life-style choices and will piss away their talents and their opportunities for wealth, fame and glory.

That new generations will make the same old mistakes is one of the few things you can rely on in an ever changing world.

Livan Moinelo Update

If you are not familiar with Livan Moinelo, he’s a Cuban pitcher who is basically NPB’s version of Josh Hader.  30 appearances into the 2020 NPB season, Livan has a 1.55 ERA and 57 K in 29 IP.  That’s a 17.7 K/9IP strikeout rate, for those of you keeping score at home.

Moinelo is 24 years old this season and in his fourth season in NPB.  He has 236 K in 169.2 career NPB IP with the strikeout rate improving each season.

The only knock on Moinelo is he is small, listed at 5’10” and 152 lbs (baseball reference lists him at 6’0″ and 139 lbs, but I suspect NPB’s numbers are more accurate).  In spite of the small size, his fastball hits 95 or 96 mph.  He has a sharp breaking curve, which he can throw as a slurve, breaking across, or more tightly as a 12-6 break that burrows down into the plate.  He also has a screwball type pitch that moves like a dropping change up.  In fact, he already has a lot of different breaking pitches that move at different angles and with different drops.

Like a lot of pitchers who rely heavily on sharp breaking pitches, he allows a fair number of walks. However, his breaking pitch heavy approach makes his fastball very hard to catch up with.

Because Moinelo is two years younger than Hader, my guess is that if Moinelo joined MLB in 2021, his arm is healthy and we have a vaccine for Covid-19, he’d look a lot like Hader in 2018. It’s anyone’s guess, though, how long he can throw as hard as and produce the spin rates he does given how small he did.  Tim Lincecum and Pedro Martinez seem like cautionary tales on how long small hard throwers can last.  Even so, Moinelo has seven more full seasons before he reaches his age 32 season.

The rubs is that Moinelo is pitching in Japan with the permission of the Cuban government.  He hasn’t defected, and he may not be willing to do so for personal or family reasons.

More KBO Retrenchment: Samsung Lions Move on from Darin Ruf

The KBO’s Samsung Lions just signed former major leaguer Tyler Saladino to a contract for 2020 that will pay Saladino $800,000 plus another $100K in performance incentives. It’s a good sign for the Lions, given Saladino’s past major league performance, but it likely means the team won’t be bringing back big bopper Darin Ruf, who did nothing but hit across three KBO seasons.

In 2019, Ruf played in 133 of the Lions’ 144 games, and his .917 OPS was 5th best in the 10-team circuit.  However, Ruf earned about $1.7M last year and presumably expected at least a small raise in 2020 based on his 2019 performance.  Saladino will cost the Lions about half of what Ruf would have cost the team.

It’s possible that Lions could still sign Ruf and go into the 2020 season with two foreign position players out of their three roster spots for foreigners.  In the second half last year, the Lions carried Ruf and outfielder Mac Williamson.  However, since the league expanded the roster to a third foreign player, at least one of whom could not be a pitcher, about five years ago every single KBO team has opened the season with two foreign starting pitchers and a lone foreign position player.

Ruf is 33 in 2020 (he turns 34 next July 28), so he could decide to retire.  Another KBO team could sign him for the $1M cap amount, or he could sign with an NPB team, probably for around the same $1.1M the Hanshin Tigers just gave former KBO slugger Jerry Sands.  Unfortunately for Ruf, there can’t be too many foreign player roster spots left in either NPB or the KBO.

If, in fact, Ruf does not return to the KBO in 2020, it means the league has lost its two best foreign hitters, and two of the top five overall, from 2019.  That’s no way to improve league play.

Meanwhile, SoftBank Hawks’ superstar Yuki Yanagita just signed a seven-year contract extension, meaning it’s all but certain Yanagita will never play in MLB.  Yanagita missed most of 2019 to a knee injury, and under NPB’s service time rules, he only earned 60 days of service time credit for the roughly 100 games he missed.  That was just enough to push back his free agency dates by a year.

It’s hard to feel too sorry for Yanagita, though.  The contract he signed with the Hawks will pay him roughly $5.2M per season with escalator clauses that could bring future salaries up to $6M or $7M per season.  As I like to say, Yanagita won’t be going to bed hungry anytime soon.

Also meanwhile, Tetsuto Yamada has elected to sign a one year deal with the Yakult Swallows which will pay him in the neighborhood of $4.5M, a club salary record.  This means that Yamada could ask to be posted for MLB teams next off-season.  However, he’ll be a domestic free agent next off-season, and Jim Allen thinks it’s just as likely that Yamada will sign a long-term deal with the Yomiuri Giants, Hanshin Tigers or SoftBank Hawks as request to be posted to MLB.

The fact that Yamada apparently did not request to be posted this off-season, when his value to MLB teams would have been greater than it will be a year from now (he’s going into his age 27 season in 2020), does suggest he could be content to remain a superstar in Japan.  Although salaries in NPB are considerably lower than MLB for players of Yamada’s caliber, the endorsement income for Yomiuri or Hanshin stars is enormous.  I suspect, though, that Japanese players who become MLB stars still make considerably more in Japanese endorsements than MLB players make in American endorsements.

Blue Jays Shell Out for Hyun-Jin Ryu

The Blue Jays have elected to give Hyun-Jin Ryu $80 million over four years, which is probably $15M to $20M too much given Ryu’s age (33 in March), weight (255 lbs) and past injury history.

One of the ironies of today’s MLB is that in spite of all the revenue sharing and extra draft picks for small market teams (Toronto isn’t a small market, but the Canadian dollar means the Jays’ revenues don’t match Toronto’s population size), small market teams, particularly those perennially trying to compete with the powerhouse teams, have to spend more to sign an A-list free agent.  It pretty much goes without saying that the Jay Birds had to give Ryu an $80M guarantee to get him.

Ryu’s contract also tends to suggest that Madison Bumgarner really did choose the Diamondbacks instead of maximizing his free agent contract, since it sure looks he could have got a nine-figure deal in this market if he’d held out for it.  Players always say they signed with the team they wanted to play for most, even when it’s obvious they elected to sign with however offered the biggest guarantee.  Here’s some evidence that MadBum had some other priorities.

In a much smaller signing, the Padres signed former NPBer Pierce Johnson for two years at a $5M guarantee, with a team option for an affordable third season.  Johnson is only the latest in a steadily increasing number of former MLBers who have gone to Japan for a year or three and then returned to big money from MLB.  It’s clearly a trend that is increasing.

For Johnson, the deal was a no-brainer.  His wife just had a baby, so he wanted to return the U.S.  Also, his former team, the Hanshin Tigers, likely made him a two-year offer for around $3M, so the Padres’ offer was probably the most money.

The trend of signing players like Johnson is largely a product of the fact that numerous teams have had success bringing in NPB returnees, and the other teams are now copying them.  Also, I think that in a gradual way, NPB is improving relative to MLB.

Although NPB teams are still limited to four foreign players in the major league rosters, every NPB team is now carrying 7 or 8 foreign players per season in order to develop young foreigners and to ensure they are getting the maximum performance from each foreign roster spot.

Also, NPB teams have attendance numbers that suggest that they have the money to sign a better class of not-quite MLB major league performers.  NPB is a mature league, with more than 80 years now in the books, and attendance figures don’t go up or down much from year to year.  However, in recent years, there has been small, steady increases every season.

Here are NPB’s 2019 attendance figures.  Even NPB’s weakest team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, drew 1.67 million fans in 71 home dates.  That’s more than eight MLB teams in more 2019 games.  The Marines’ average attendance of 23,463 per game was better than 12 MLB teams.

The upshot is that NPB have the money to sign foreign players who only need to improve their games a little bit in Japan to make successful returns to the MLB majors.  The big difference now on the MLB side of things is that late bloomers who establish themselves as big stars in NPB don’t necessarily have to stay there anymore.

On the other hand, I’m not convinced that we are about to see a big increase in the number of KBO stars who go on to MLB success.  NPB is clearly much closer to the MLB level of play than is the KBO, and I don’t think it’s likely that the KBO level of play will increase significantly any time soon.

The KBO has decided to let its teams sign two more foreign players each to play at the KBO minor league level, so that will improve performance from the three major league roster spots each team has for foreign players.  However, attendance was down sharply in the KBO in 2019, and it’s revenues can’t possibly be near to NPB’s.  The lack of funds is showing in a big way this off-season, with foreign player salaries down, making it more difficult for KBO teams to compete with NPB for the best foreign players.

The KBO is still a great opportunity for foreign 4-A players, but the league is going to have a hard time signing players like Dustin Nippert, Eric Thames and Josh Lindblom going forward unless it can get its attendance up and keep it there, avoiding a crash every time the Korean National Team does poorly in the World Baseball Classic.

 

Still More Asian Comings and Goings

It’s been an exciting week for International pro baseball, at least for baseball nerds like me.  We’re seeing more movement between the World’s major leagues than ever and for more money than ever.

The Milwaukee Brewers signed KBO ace Josh Lindblom for three years and $9.125 million guarantee.  It’s a big commitment by the standards of former MLB washouts returning to MLB after honing their craft in Asia, but it makes a certain amount of sense.  Even if Lindblom can’t really cut it as a major league starter, the odds are good he’d be an effective major league reliever.  At roughly $3M a season, that’s currently a successful middle reliever/set-up man salary.

NPB’s Orix Buffaloes signed still major league starter Adam Jones to a two-year $8M guarantee with the possibility that the contract could be worth $15.5 million to Jones if the Buffaloes exercise a third season option and Jones earns all performance incentives.

Jones has obviously slipped a bit over the last few seasons, but the decline has been gradual and he’s still able to stay healthy and play regularly.  In Japan’s smaller ballparks against generally weaker pitchers, he could still be a big power threat there.

It’s also exciting to see a small revenue club like Orix take this big a risk on a foreign player.  It’s a little like seeing the KC Royals shell out the bucks for one of the off-season’s five best free agents.

Jim Allen recently had a good post comparing Jones to some of the other former major league stars who have gone over to play in Japan after hitting at least 100 major league home runs.  It’s a reminder of just how many and for how long former major league stars have gone to NPB to wind down their careers and haul in a few more lucrative paydays.

Reliever Joely Rodriguez returns to MLB with a two-year $5.5M deal from the Texas Rangers.  It’s almost certain that Pierce Johnson will also be returning to MLB in 2020 after a very successful season for the Hanshin Tigers.  As more players turn success in Asia into big contracts to return to the States, better players will sign to play in the KBO and NPB.

Another KBO ace Angel Sanchez signed a mult-year deal (probably 2 seasons) with the Yomiuri Giants.  It’s being reported that Sanchez turned down bigger offers from MLB clubs to sign with Yomiuri, but I kind of doubt it.  What player from the Americas would turn down more money to play in the U.S. in order to play in Japan?

That said, it’s at least possible that Sanchez figures he’s got a better chance of long term success in NPB, particularly if Yomiuri is guaranteeing at least two years.  One of the toughest things for foreign players in the Asian majors is that they have to be immediately successful or they get shipped out fast.

Needless to say some players (and their agents) are still putting out rumors of MLB interest to squeeze a few more bucks out of their Asian teams.  I saw a rumor that MLB teams had an interest in the KBO’s Casey Kelly.  He re-signed with the LG Twins for a $1.2M guarantee and $300K in incentives.  Similar rumors have been floated about Mel Rojas Jr. which probably means he’ll soon re-sign with the KT Wiz for a nice raise from 2019.

In a strange move I hope to hear more about later, the Kiwoom Heroes will not be re-signing Jerry Sands, who was the KBO’s best foreign hitter in 2019.  The Heroes pay the worst of any the KBO’s teams, at least when it comes to foreign players.  They paid Sands only $500,000 last year for what was his first full KBO season.  My guess is they offered him a raise to something like $800,000 and he wanted something more like $1.2M.  I expect Sands to surface with an NPB team, because at 32 in 2020, he’s a little old for a return to MLB.

The Heroes signed Taylor Motter for a paltry $350,000 to replace Sands, and I doubt it’s going to work out well for the Heroes.  Motter slashed a dismal .206/.298/.343 in 70 games for two AA teams in 2019.  Hard to see him hitting in the KBO.  Odds are he’ll end up as an overpaid back-up middle infielder.

Are Qualifying Offers Negotiable?

I saw on mlbtraderumors a few minutes ago that the Orioles are putting middle infielder Jonathan Villar on outright waivers because the O’s don’t want to pay him the $10.1 million he’s projected to get through arbitration, and they couldn’t find a trade partner for him.  As MLBTR points, it seems like kind of a crazy move by the team, as baseball reference ranks Villar as the team’s best position player in 2019, fangraphs says he was worth $31.7M last year, and the O’s 2020 payroll will be low with or without Villar.  It does tend to show why the O’s have been so awful in recent years.

Anyhoo, it made me wonder if O’s could have tried to get Villar to sign at the 2020 price the team wanted, say $7M or $8M (assuming the team valued Villar at that much), and tried to sweeten the deal by releasing any ability the team might have to give him a qualifying offer next off-season.

For certain players, a release of any ability by the team to later give the player a qualifying offer in the future would be well worth a much lower salary to the player now.  There are certain teams, the tightwads particularly, who would also likely be willing to trade away the right to make a Qualifying Offer for the ability to save money during the player’s six years of control.

One issue would be whether a team could permanently waive the QO even if the player is traded to another team later.  Frankly, I don’t see any good reason why not, because any later acquiring team would go in knowing that they they also couldn’t make a qualifying offer and would price that fact in to any trade they make for the player.

A real good example would be Christian Yelich earlier in his career.  The cash-strapped and just plain cheap Marlins might readily have been willing to sell the QO for a smaller salary when they gave Yelich a seven year deal before the 2015 season.  Teams like the Marlins know they are going to lose their best players sooner or later, and maybe selling the QO would have made it possible for the Marlins to hold onto Yelich longer

Meanwhile, had the Marlins sold the QO, the Brewers could have factored this in when traded for Yelich before the 2018 season.  In fact, it would likely not have changed Yelich’s worth at all, because the Brewers would be receiving the same player owed less future salary under Yelich’s long-term deal because Yelich had purchased the QO from the Marlins.

One has to remember that the Qualifying Offer regime is ultimately about holding down player salaries, and I very strongly suspect that teams are intentionally overvaluing what little they actually lose by signing a free agent tied to a QO because there is more sophisticated collusion going on than the old in-your-face collusion the owners got burned on in arbitration back in the 1980’s.

Still, like using opt-out clauses to obtain lower guarantees on long-term contracts, there is no reason why Qualifying Offers should not be negotiable also.  If it does not require further bargaining between the players and owners, it may only be a matter of a crafty player agent like Scott Boras or a crafty team executive to put the QO on the bargaining table as a bargaining chip,  In the case of a young superstar like a Ronald Acuna or Juan Soto, there might be real value to both player and team if the QO is on the table as a subject of discussion.

I Probably Would Have Gone with Bregman or Semien

If I had an American League MVP vote, I probably would have gone with Alex Bregman on the theory that he was more “valuable.”  It’s hard to argue that Mike Trout isn’t the best player in baseball and the best, at least in an absolute sense, in the Junior Circuit in 2019.

However, the Angels went a pathetic 72-90, and Trout missed 28 games, while Bregman played in 157 and filled in at SS for the ‘Stros when Carlos Correa was out for sixty games with a broken rib (I kind of doubt the veracity of the claim that it happened during a massage — players often lie about stupid injuries of this sort).

In fact, one could make a compelling argument that Marcus Semien was the “most valuable” AL player, as the A’s probably don’t make the post-season without his tremendous performance, while the Astros would have made the post-season even if Bregman had merely played as well as he did in 2018.

No complaints about the NL voting, though.  Bellinger, then Yelich seems just about right.