It’s 1 AM on a Saturday night in mid-May, and in his otherwise quiet New York City apartment, Jon Sciambi is getting ready for work. As his neighbors snooze, Sciambi, a veteran TV and radio announcer for ESPN, goes over box scores and lineups in his home broadcast studio ahead of the upcoming LG Twins-Kiwoom Heroes game in the KBO, Korea’s professional baseball league. With MLB – Sciambi’s regular assignment – on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, his job now is to do play by play for games featuring teams and players that, a few weeks prior, he barely knew (if he knew them at all), doing so from thousands of miles away while stuck at home like so many other Americans. For both him and viewers around the country, the KBO is the only game in town, and one that Sciambi and the rest of his ESPN counterparts are learning more or less on the fly.

“This is our baseball window, is the way I’m looking at it, and we’re trying to sort it out,” Sciambi says. “We’re trying to get as much information as we possibly can and put it out there and get good stories and talk baseball and have some fun, man. Smile and have some fun.”

Ordinarily during this time of year, Sciambi and ESPN would be working their way through the early part of the MLB season, traveling from coast to coast and bringing viewers big games from the biggest teams. But COVID-19 has upended both lives and leagues, leaving sports networks scrambling to fill slots that ordinarily would’ve gone not just to MLB, but also to the other major North American professional leagues, which also find themselves on hiatus. ESPN, which normally airs a handful of MLB games a week and spends countless hours parsing transactions and takes, was no exception, suddenly finding itself without any baseball at all as every league on the planet came to an indefinite halt.

The solution came in the form of the KBO. Thanks to a rigorous program of testing and contact tracing, South Korea was able to contain COVID-19 more quickly and effectively than other countries, allowing its citizenry to resume a semblance of normal life. That included its professional league, which had been forced to stop spring training in mid-March and delay its Opening Day. A month later, though, the KBO announced that it would return at the beginning of May, albeit in stadiums without fans and with social distancing measures, such as no handshakes, high fives, or spitting. Aside from Taiwan’s CPBL, it would be the only professional league in action — and as the highest-caliber baseball available, it became an immediate draw for ESPN. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two months, with no Major League Baseball to watch due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve absorbed myself in the progress and eventual return to play of the Korea Baseball Organization. It’s a league to which I had previously paid little mind beyond the arrival of Hyun-Jin Ryu 류현진, the return of Eric Thames 테임즈, and the departures of several less familiar players, such as knuckleballing lefty Ryan Feierabend 피어밴드, but it’s one to which I suddenly felt more drawn via my connections to FanGraphs alumni Sung Min Kim 김민 and Josh Herzenberg. Both are now living in Busan and working for the Lotte Giants, the former in the R&D department, the latter as the team’s pitching coordinator and quality control coach. Recent discussions with them, with MyKBO proprietor Dan Kurtz, and with KBO alums Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Eric Hacker 해커 have taught me a great deal about the league and helped bring me up to speed in offering some analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

The defending champion Doosan Bears are merely in third place in the Korea Baseball Organization standings, but through the season’s first three weeks, nobody in the league has been hotter than their designated hitter, Jose Miguel Fernandez 페르난데스. Through Sunday’s games, the 32-year-old Cuban defector is batting .500/.531/.764, leading the league in the first two categories as well as wRC+ (240, via Statiz) and trailing Roberto Ramos 라모스 by a mere three points in slugging percentage. His performance has led the Bears’ powerhouse offense, which alas had trouble papering over the team’s pitching issues.

When you’re hitting .500, everything is by definition hot streak, but Fernandez closed the past week in exceptional fashion even as the Bears did not. After going hitless for just the second time all year on May 20 against the NC Dinos, he rebounded to go 3-for-4 with an RBI in a 12-6 loss the next day, then 3-for-4 with a double, a homer, and six RBI in a 12-7 win over the Samsung Lions on Friday. He followed that up with two more multi-hit games against the Lions, first a 4-for-5 performance that included a solo homer (his fourth) in a 10-6 win on Saturday, then a 2-for-4 showing in a 13-0 loss on Sunday. That’s a 12-for-17 spree, and 12 multi-hit games so far this season, including three apiece of the three- and four-hit varieties. Whew.

Known more for his bat-to-ball skills than his raw power, Fernandez has never homered more than 17 times in a season. But thus far in 2020, the lefty swinger — who lists at 5-foot-10, 185-pounds — has been launching some titanic blasts. Here’s his first homer of the year, off the KT Wiz’s Min Kim 김민 on May 10:

Don't know that you guys are keeping track but Jose Miguel Fernandez has another multi-hit game on his hands. Currently 3-3 on the day with this 3 run shot. His 1st HR of 2020. #KBO #DoosanBears pic.twitter.com/1f551qrQgQ

— KBO Collections ? (@kbocollections) May 10, 2020

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After the initial sugar rush of watching live KBO baseball faded, I’ve settled into a comfortable routine. While I work and relax throughout the day, I’ll watch some KBO action from the night before, either the English language feature game or a Twitch rebroadcast in Korean. In that way, I soak in the atmosphere of baseball almost by osmosis, sometimes focusing closely on a play but sometimes just listening to the sound of it.

At some point, however, I started to get a sense of déjà vu. Hey, that Ah-Seop Son guy is on base again. Hey, did he walk? That was a nice at-bat there, but haven’t I seen this before? It turns out that yeah, that was the case. Through 61 plate appearances in 2020, Son has drawn 14 walks. That’s a cool 23% walk rate. I wasn’t just imagining things — 14 games, 14 walks. He truly is just walking all the time.

Some quick backup before we cover what’s going on this season: Son has been a mainstay in the Giants lineup for the last decade. Since 2010, his worst wRC+ was a 112 showing in 2019, with a 151 wRC+ effort in 2014 his best overall year. For the most part, he’s been a metronomic presence at the top of the lineup, as his career stats attest — he’s a career .323/.395/.471 hitter, which works out to a 134 wRC+. That’s something like career Will Clark — relative to a weaker competition level, of course.

That career .401 OBP says a lot about his on-base prowess, and indeed, Son’s career walk rate is a robust 11.3%. He’s never been much of a slugger, but the combination of gap power, 20-homer pop at his (and the league offensive environment’s) peak, and an all-fields, line-drive approach have made opposing pitchers careful around the plate, and he’s been willing to take his walks. Read the rest of this entry »

If the NC Dinos are the Korea Baseball Organization’s hottest team — and at 12-2, with a three-game lead over the second-place LG Twins, that’s the case — then the SK Wyverns are its coldest. Through Friday, they’ve gone 2-12, a skid that includes a 10-game losing streak, one game shy of the longest in franchise history.

Based in Incheon, South Korea’s third-largest city after Seoul and Busan, the Wyverns — those are two-legged dragons, in case you’ve forgotten — have been particularly successful in the past couple of years, finishing second in the regular season standings twice in a row. After going 78-65-1 in 2018 under former major league manager Trey Hillman, they beat the Nexen (now Kiwoom) Heroes three games to two in the best-of-five Playoff Series, then beat the Doosan Bears four games to two in the best-of-seven Korean Series for their first championship since 2010 and fourth since joining the league in 2000. Last year, they went 88-55-1 but finished tied with the Bears, that after holding a 7 1/2-game advantage over them as late as August 24. Since the Bears held a 9-7 advantage in head-to-head competition, they won first place and automatically advanced to the Korean Series, while the Wyverns suffered a three-game sweep at the hands of the Heroes in the Semi-Playoff Series.

Per Dan Szymborski’s rough KBO projections, the Wyverns were forecast to be the league’s third-best team behind the Heroes and Bears, with a 17.0% chance of finishing first and an 83.3% chance of making the playoffs. Instead, after splitting their first two games against the Hanhwa Eagles, they lost 10 straight: the series rubber match against the Eagles, then two to the Lotte Giants and three to the LG Twins (both on the road), three to the Dinos at home, and the series opener agains the Heroes in Seoul. They finally got off the schneid by beating the Heroes on Wednesday, 5-3, then lost to them again on Thursday, a game in which they blew a 5-0 lead and suffered this final indignity, a walk-off infield single that deflected off shortstop Sung-hyun Kim 김성현. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve found in my recent attempts to write about the Korea Baseball Organization, gathering statistics often requires a cross-site scramble, and historical information and context isn’t easy to come by. With that in mind, and particularly with the wide year-to-year fluctuation in that league’s home run rate occurring at the same time that balls have been soaring out of the park at record rates here in the States, I thought it would be worthwhile to pull together some quick comparisons to the trends we’ve seen in MLB.

First, let’s take a look at the two leagues’ run scoring since the KBO’s inception in 1982:

Perhaps understandably given its comparatively recent arrival, the KBO has been the more volatile of the two leagues in terms of scoring rates, with the higher peak (5.62 runs per game in 2014, to MLB’s max of 5.14 in 2000), the lower valley (3.67 runs per game in 1986, to MLB’s low of 4.07 runs per game in 2014), and the wider standard deviation (0.53 to 0.29). Note that the KBO’s peak and MLB’s nadir coincide with that aforementioned 2014 season, and that the two leagues are usually significantly far apart; the annual average, in terms of absolute value, is 0.49 runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the first two weeks of the Korea Baseball Organization season, the NC Dinos have dominated the rest of the league, jumping out to an 11-2 start. On Tuesday’s ESPN-televised game, they beat the defending champion Doosan Bears, who have come back to the pack with a record of 8-5, that after handing the Dinos just their second loss of the season on Wednesday. The Dinos’ success thus far is worth a closer look, even from 7,000 miles and a language barrier away.

In Tuesday’s game at the Bears’ Jamsil Stadium in Seoul — the venue they share with the LG Twins, but like all KBO games thus far this year one devoid of fans due to the pandemic — the Dinos pounced on 23-year-old righty Young-ha Lee 이영하, the Bears’ third-best starter last year, for three first-inning runs, sending all nine hitters to the plate (Do KBO fans argue over the definition of “batting around” the way MLB fans do? I’m not here to create an international incident). Second baseman Min-woo Park 박민우 led off with a double and scored two batters later when designated hitter Sung-bum Na 나성범 singled.

The Dinos are underway early at Jamsil!#KBO | #NCDinos pic.twitter.com/iTCYYxkXry

— taewoongi (??) (@taewoongii) May 19, 2020

Na took second on a balk, then scored on a single by catcher Euiji Yang 양의지, who himself came around to score thanks in part to a wild pitch and an infield single off a deflection. The Dinos ran the score to 4-0 in the second as Park drew a walk, took second on a very long single by center fielder Aaron Altherr 알테어 off the base of the outfield wall, advanced to third when Yang was hit by pitch to load the bases, and scored on a sacrifice fly by third baseman Sok Min Park 박석민.

(A note to users: in case you’re wondering how to get your fix of play-by-play action after the fact, MyKBOstats offers English-language box scores. When possible, each box score page also offers links to highlights and the full replay on YouTube, all the more reason to drop by.) Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m still scaling the learning curve when it comes to the Korea Baseball Organization, I got a little confused during this week’s conversations with Josh Lindblom 린드블럼 and Eric Hacker 해커, two pitchers who found greater success in the KBO than they had in MLB — to the point that both were recognized with end-of-season awards. Here I’ll offer some clarity, with a hat tip to MyKBO’s Dan Kurtz for pointing me in the right direction.

Every year, the KBO recognizes one player at each position (outfielders are grouped together) for its Golden Glove Awards, as voted upon by baseball writers, broadcasters, and analysts. In its inaugural year (1982), the awards were intended to be defense-based, as with its stateside counterpart, the Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, but they now recognize the overall best player at each position. League leaders in major offensive and pitching categories earn automatic nominations, while other candidates must meet certain thresholds to qualify. For position players, it’s defensive innings at a position, while for starting pitchers, it’s enough innings to qualify for the ERA title (144, one per scheduled team game, as is also the case in MLB). Relievers can qualify by recording at least 10 wins, 30 saves, or 30 holds. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday morning in Southlake, Texas, a Dallas suburb nearly 7,000 miles away from Changwon, South Korea, Eric Hacker 해커 celebrated the NC Dinos’ Sok Min Park 박석민’s game-winning home run against the KT Wiz. “Walk off by the most interesting teammate I have ever played with,” he tweeted. “#18 Awesome teammate and most definitely has his own style.”

Walk off by the most interesting teammate I have ever played with. #18 Awesome teammate and most definitely has his own style. #ncdinos #kbo #espn #mlb @espn @karlravechespn @Kurkjian_ESPN @JeffPassan @PerezEd pic.twitter.com/U4uBf5a2yd

— Eric Hacker (@Hacker_E) May 12, 2020

Park’s home run, his second of the game and third of the young KBO season, capped an impressive comeback. Down 6-3 in the eighth inning against the Wiz, the Dinos’ star third baseman hit a solo shot to trim the lead to 6-4. In the ninth inning, with the Dinos down to their final strike, designated hitter Sung-bum Na 나성범 launched a 425-foot two-run homer to tie the game, setting up Park’s walk-off shot. The win lifted the Dinos — arguably the league’s most entertaining team for the flair players like Park, Na, catcher Euiji Yang 양의지 and others bring to the game — to 5-1. At this writing they’re a KBO-best 7-1, one game ahead of the resurgent Lotte Giants.

Hacker, now 37 years old and selling residential real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, spent 2013-17 as a rotation mainstay for the Dinos, starting from the time they joined the KBO as an expansion team. He helped the team to postseason appearances in the last four of those seasons, including a trip to the best-of-seven championship Korean Series in 2016, when the team was swept by the powerhouse Doosan Bears. Including a half-season spent with the Nexen Heroes (now the Kiwoom Heroes) in 2018, he ranked second only to the KIA Tigers’ Hyeon-Jong Yang, the league’s 2017 MVP, in pitching WAR (24.1, all advanced stats via Statiz), and fifth in innings (935.1). Read the rest of this entry »

On the mound is Ricardo Pinto. He’s 26 years old. At 6-feet and 195 pounds, he has a muscular build that immediately makes him look like an athlete. He’s struggling through this particular appearance, thanks to command issues and some iffy defense behind him, but he hasn’t really been hit hard. His low-to-mid 90s heat is on the faster side of what Korean Baseball Organization hitters typically see, and he leans on it heavily.

At the plate, with the bases loaded and two outs, is Yong Taik Park 박용택. He’s 41 years old. He wears glasses in the batter’s box. As he awaits each pitch, he stands with his front foot resting nearly on the edge of the box behind him. At 6-foot-1, 185 pounds, he doesn’t differ dramatically from Pinto in size, but his baggier uniform makes him look tall and thin.

Pinto begins his violent delivery, and Park brings his front foot square with the plate. As the ball approaches, he twitches it slightly, perhaps as a way to subtly maintain his timing. Finally, at the last moment, his bat explodes through the baseball as Park uncorks his whole body to turn on a pitch high and tight. It’s a gorgeous left-handed swing, and it produces a bases-clearing double.

And then the legendary Park Yong-taik does it again to break it wide open.

A 3-run double for the 41-year-old DH. pic.twitter.com/NJmjw7kQO4

— Locked On Orioles (@LockedOnOrioles) May 13, 2020

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