Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1323: Bed God

Episode Date: January 19, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Yankees signing Adam Ottavino and the Angels signing Cody Allen, super-pens vs. improvised pens, and Manny Machado, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Trout, then (15:19) bring on Baseball Prospectus writer Sung Min Kim to talk about how the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) has increased its popularity among young […]

This is the dawn, the break of day, after the midnight party. These ringing ears have waited years to hear the bells of high Hello and welcome to episode 1323 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hey, Ben. So we will be talking for most of this episode to Sungmin Kim from Baseball Prospectus.

He's going to tell us about the KBO, Korea Baseball Organization, specifically about how it has found out how to be popular and how to attract young fans, which seems to be something that Major League Baseball is struggling with. So that is an enlightening conversation. lightning conversation. We'll talk about their crowd experience, why it seems to be so much more fun to actually go to a KBO game than it is to go to an MLB game these days, and affordable as well. But before we do, there's not a whole lot that we have to talk about. I guess the most prominent move that has been made since we last spoke is Adam Modavino going to the Yankees for three years and $27 million. So Yankees had a good bullpen. Now they have reconstructed a Super Bowl pen, I guess. Yeah, and it's fun.

It's simultaneously a lot of fun and also just kind of, I don't know, almost trite old hat at this point because we've been talking about the Yankees in a Super Bowl pen for years because they've had a Super Bowl pen for years. In fact, if you want to go back through the history because of the presence of Mariano Rivera, the Yankees haven't had a below- bullpen to my knowledge in like, I don't know, 25 years. It's hilarious how good they've been. But anyway, what they've done. They haven't been a below average team in that time either.

Yeah, there's that too. But you figure a bullpen is the most volatile part of a team, right? Yeah. It turns out, nope, not always. Regardless. Right. So the Yankees have signed Zach Britton and now they've signed Adam Adovino, which you look at it and it's like, okay, so you have Earl Chapman and Britton and Montevino and Dylan Batances and Chad Green and also Jonathan Holder is pretty good. Like that's a laughably deep bullpen, but it's also almost exactly the same bullpen they had in the second half of last season after they traded for Zach Britton.

They've just swapped David Robertson for Adam Montevino, which might be an upgrade, might be a downgrade, or it might be the same. I don't prefer one over the other at all. They even signed for similar amounts of money, Robertson getting $4 million less. So it's overwhelming how good the Yankees bullpen is, but also already was. So I don't know. It feels less, this is stupid because it doesn't matter, every season is independent, but it feels less exciting that the yankees are just redoing what they already had as opposed to like if some other team built a super bullpen or if the anchors are like actually we're gonna have the best i don't know catcher tandem in baseball or something it feels like it's well-trod territory even though the fact that they can be have a bullpen this good and then bring it back together and also now they have james paxton on the team yeah like this other than cc sabathia this team is going to strike out like

everyone right yeah and it's another giant we talked about how giant the yankees are now they've got six five adam out of you know we were just talking about the hitters but it's the pitchers too and i guess they're just collecting former rockies for some reason. They picked up LeMahieu and Tulewitzki and now Adovino. Yeah, the Super Bowl pen thing, maybe it just feels a little less overpowering than it did because the Yankees have had the Super Bowl pen and they haven't won the World Series. So it's not like it's automatic. Now, you could argue that they haven't made the most of their Super Bowl pen, that they haven't deployed it properly,

that Aaron Boone was not aggressive enough in going to it last year. And I'm sure we did talk about that at the time. So it does come down to actually using it. You can't just have it and then keep it behind the glass. You have to break the glass when the time comes when the emergency arises and start going to these guys the whole game or you're just not going to get the most value that you could out of it and just just the randomness of baseball and even if you have a bunch of shutdown relievers they might not be shutdown relievers on any given day but yeah it's a really intimidating group and it has not gotten any worse despite losing david robertson And Adovino is an interesting story that has been told, but Travis Sotchick wrote about it at Fangraphs how he rebuilt himself. He was a driveline guy after 2017 when he struggled, and he rented a space in Manhattan because he is a native New Yorker. And his father-in-law, I think, had a space in Harlem

where he just sort of set up a pitching lab and made himself better. And now I guess he probably doesn't have to do that because he's a Yankee. He can probably just go work out at Yankee Stadium or something. So good for him. Yeah, so much has been written. The Otto Vino case is interesting because he made mechanical changes and also changes in his repertoire and also changes in how he used his repertoire. You can look at his delivery. He doesn't, he's always been, he throws across his body. That's called a crossfire delivery. And his crossfire delivery was less cross fiery in 2018.

That's kind of one thing. And then he, so much has been written about his designing a cutter from scratch at the driveline facility, which is like an interesting story. But also at the advice, I think of Matt Daniels, now an advisor with the Giants from driveline, Adovino basically eliminated his foreseam fastball and leaned on his sinker. And I think even most interesting is that

for the first time in his career, Adovino pitched backward in 2018. Everybody knows him for his giant sweeping frisbee slider, but he threw his slider a lot more often when he was behind in the count or even in the count than he did when he was ahead in the count, which is when you would expect to see that slider thrown. So I think that too little has been written about the fact that Adovino basically became a sinker slider pitcher, and then he pitched backward the entire season, which is fascinating. Nobody, just using the method of breaking ball rate when ahead in the

count versus when behind or even in the count count nobody had a bigger difference in the same direction as adam adovino he was the most extreme pitcher in that regard everybody almost everybody throws a breaking ball more when they're ahead of the count that's the put away pitch so adovino just kind of worked backwards and caught hitters by surprise which is fascinating i don't know if it's repeatable it's worth pointing out that he was a little worse in the second half he He got all this attention for like an unbelievable April. But then after April, his numbers were inferior. He wound up almost having the exact same season in his peripherals as Matt Barnes, who everyone looks at the Red Sox bullpen and thinks, who's Matt Barnes?

The Red Sox bullpen is terrible. So anyway, but that's all Adovino. And related to the Yankees, because they've now spent on Britain, they've spent on Adovino, They've spent on LeMahieu. They got James Paxton. They spent on Jay Happ. They brought in Troy Tulewitzki. They've done a lot.

The whole time, people have been sitting back thinking, like, when are they going to sign Manny Machado? We don't spend a lot of time talking about gut feelings on this podcast because they're stupid. But based on our, and specifically right now, your gut feelings, do you think the yankees have talked about financial responsibility and staying out of the cap and whatever all offseason long they've done all that they can to stay away from being connected to like harper and machado where in the

back of your head if any what do you think the chances are the yankees do just kind of re-emerge as a contender for for either one of them just because they're the yankees and because those players are out there yeah and supposedly there's been a mystery team although I don't know if the Yankees are ever the mystery team but it's I mean I would never put something past Brian Cashman just sort of swooping in because the price is lower than he thought it was going to be I feel like a lot of Yankee fans feel like they were sold the idea of Harper or Machado. Whether the Yankees ever said that explicitly, I don't know. But I think the narrative that the team was presenting was we're going to be responsible and stay under the luxury tax and reset the penalty.

And we're going to do that because we're just going to go wild and sign Harper or Machado. That's kind of the impression I think that the fan base was given. And if you're a Yankees fan, you kind of always expect to be in the running for one of the top players. So I think a lot of Yankees fans are looking at DJ LeMayhew and thinking that's not Manny Machado and Troy Tawitsky. He's not Manny Machado. He kind of used to be, but he's not now. And so I think fans are still somewhat underwhelmed, even though the Yankees have been very active and have spent some money. They haven't spent the money.

And so I wouldn't totally rule it out, but it's just hard to see, I guess, at this point, how their need is greater than some other teams that also need those guys. It's just, I mean, they have Stanton, and they have Judge, and they have Hicks, and they have Gardner in the outfield, and then in the infield now it's pretty crowded. Now there's no Manny Machado there, and if Hiker Tulewitzki will get hurt at some point they're barely paying him anything anyway so it's his presence doesn't really preclude anything but still you've got and do hard and you've got torres and you've got lomei hue and gregorius will be back at some point and maybe there's a trade or something but it would get awful crowded there if mini machado were

suddenly plopped right down into that mix just imagine how the padres feel right now in desperate need of a long-term third baseman, and they spent their money on Eric Hosmer a year ago, whose war, I believe, was basically zero. Is there anything you want to say about Cody Allen and the Angels? Cody Allen is with the Angels now, by the way. Yeah, right. One-year deal. I don't have a whole lot to say about Cody Allen. I don't know. The Angels have done a good job of building bullpens lately without really going and getting the top-tier relievers on the market. They've, I think, professed a desire to find closers just lying around rather than pay for established ones. And I guess this is their idea of the big market relief signing is Cody Allen kind of post-peak Cody Allen, or at least it seems that way. Yeah, I was looking at Allen and his big problem last year. You know, when

you're a reliever and you're throwing 60-odd innings a season, the difference between being a good reliever and being like a non-tenderable reliever is very, very slim. And for Allen, there was basically a difference between giving up five home runs in a season and giving up 11, or whatever you want to say. He strikes out more than a batter an inning, but if you strike out 11 batters per nine innings instead of 12, then that's a problem. If you walk four instead of three per nine innings, then that's a problem. The difference is just so slight. So I think if you're the Angels, this is a team that hasn't demonstrated any preference

for signing relievers to big contracts. I don't know if there was a more obvious team to sign Craig Kimbrell other than maybe the Red Sox, but the Angels, I would assume, are not going to do that. There are presumably financial considerations in there, but they probably look at Cody Allen and think, well, his stuff is exactly the same as it was when he was better, so he'll probably bounce back. And who knows how out of, like, Williams-Jerez or Ty Buttrey or Justin Anderson or Kenan Middleton is going to bounce back. And who knows how out of like Williams-Jerez or Ty Buttrey or Justin Anderson or Keenan Middleton is going to bounce back. And also Cam Redrosian is in there. There's

a lot of relievers who have been talked about as potentially good future major league relievers in their bullpen right now. So it's interesting that the Angels have spent the offseason putting together stopgaps. It's just another year of stopgaps around, you know, Mike Trout and the people supporting Mike Trout and the people supporting Mike Trout. And as is, the Angels look like they're a serious wildcard contender. So once again, you look at them and you think, well, a year from now, what does their roster look like? We don't know. But if you can keep signing players to one-year contracts, you don't have to think more than a year into the future. So I don't know, somewhat credit to Billy Epler, but also

surprising that they haven't been in the Craig Kimbrell market. Although to this point, I'm not sure anybody's been in the Craig Kimbrell market. Yeah. And so there's been, it seems like there's been a lot of talk about trout and an extension in the past few days, maybe just because everyone's bored and has nothing else to talk about, but that keeps coming up. And I don't know, it doesn't seem like anything is imminent, but we've talked about what the terms for a trout extension might look like before, and why trout would even want to stay in a place that has failed to build a winter, even with him around. So we will see. But yeah, not a whole lot else that we have to give you an update on, because not a whole lot else is happening. that we have to give you an update on because not a whole lot else is happening. It's funny, you mentioned Hosmer, and I haven't even really gone back and looked at his season until just now when you invoked him. And boy, that was predictable.

We just don't get that kind of contract anymore. I almost miss, I mean, A, very few players get that kind of contract anymore. I almost miss, I mean, A, very few players get that kind of contract, period, and B, very few who just aren't actually good get that kind of contract. Just that whole thing was mystifying. I mean, you know, good for him

to get paid, but just wondering what the Padres were thinking. Why there is this certain aura that just surrounds certain guys where their stats are not good, and yet people will look at them and think, well, maybe he actually is good, and maybe the defensive stats are wrong,

and he's actually a good defender, and maybe his leadership is worth this many wins, even if the team is not good anyway. But, man, he just had, had like not only did he fail to sustain any of the apparent improvements he had made the previous year but he just regressed all the way back it was really his worst full season since i guess like his second one way back in 2012 there was just no growth there whatsoever and i believe that last time i checked he had the lowest average launch angle of all hitters in baseball last season so congratulations eric hosmer congratulations

san diego padres i guess the upside right now is that hosmer is still only 29 years old but you know there's the whole will myers thing i'm not gonna dwell on this we'll have a padre season preview coming up in like a month or two and we'll talk more about that then at least as far as trout is concerned i would imagine that i know Fabian Ardaia I believe wrote the other day about Trout and whether he would sign an extension with the Angels and I would imagine that's just coming up because we are approaching extension season it's time of year it's after all the arbitration settlements are done but before the start of the regular season Mike Trout for example signed his current contract on March 28th of 2014 you see see a number every year, I think a number of extensions signed somewhere between

January and the end of March. So if an extension were to be signed, you would figure it would be when Trout is two years away from free agency as opposed to one. Usually when a player is one year away, you see that player just test out the market. You don't see a whole lot of players sign away when they're that close to it. I think Anthony Rendon this year might end up being an exception to that because he's expressed an interest in re-signing with the Nationals.

He's a year away, but they have to figure out Bryce Harper first. So anyway, maybe we'll be talking about Mike Thread soon, but for now, this interest probably should be. Yep. All right, so we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back with Sangmin Kim of Baseball Perspectives.

All right. As promised, we are joined now by Sungmin Kim. He is a writer for Baseball Perspectives, The Athletic, The Gravity Blues. He's all over the place these days. He is doing a year-long series at BP about KBO, the Korean baseball organization. And he is joining us now to talk about it and about baseball in Korea. Welcome to the show. Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, we're very happy to have you. So we wanted to have you on to talk about an article you wrote earlier this week, and we will. But in the time between us inviting you and you coming on, you sent some tweets that we would like to ask you about, too. You were tweeting about Korean nicknames for American baseball players. nicknames for American baseball players and some of them are very amusing and maybe something that we should incorporate into our discussions of these players so tell us about a few of these how did you come across them particularly I guess we should start with Mike Trout Mike Trout has a nickname oh yeah so I do not know a lot of people in real life in Korea that are particularly into Major League Baseball. So I don't know if these are used among fans when they are talking to each other. But at least on the online presence, I've seen players be referred to different nicknames. And because

I'm not really the most, I haven't really been most literate in terms of Korean slangs and nicknames and all that kind of stuff. You know, I had to figure it out. And then yesterday I saw a thread on this website called the MLB Park, which is like a Korean, like a Major League Baseball and KBO forum. Someone was asking, what are some nicknames of major league baseball players in korean and you know some people replied and then i was like whoa these are some fascinating stuff right here and obviously uh we had to start with mike trout and i mean i have to start with my job because it is mike and his nickname in Korean is a well, Bidulgi is a term for pigeon and they incorporated the first syllable of his name to call him Tudulgi and the reason why his nickname is pigeon is because there are a lot of nines in his stat sheet. I have to pull up his stash stash it to look at some of them But I'm pretty sure he has like batting averages that around like 299 LPS is around like 999 something like that. Also like 39 home runs in a season. So there's oh, yeah, like

129 runs in 2012 49 stolen bases in 2012 as well 29 home runs in 2016 39 home runs in 2018 79 rvis in 2018 as well so obviously you see a lot of nines in his stash and korean fans have noticed that and uh the term nine one of the ways to say the number nine in korean is goo and the thing is that because my truck keeps repeating nines in his stash it people just kind of like put them together and just sounds like google google and that also happens to be how we enunciate the sound that pigeons make in korean so hence the reason why his nickname became Pigeon in Korean. As good as any other reason, I guess. It's only a stretch until at the beginning, and then it sets in.

And then you realize, all right, I guess we're just going to call him Pigeon. And we don't really have to have that much of a, I don't know, profound explanation. And what were some of the other ones that you came across besides just Mike Trapp? We can start with Mike Trapp, but then we can move on to somebody else. Well, first Mike Trapp, and then next you got to go to Mookie Betts. And as for Betts, it's pretty simple. His last name, Betts, sounds a lot like Bettsu, which is a Korean term for cabbage. So naturally, his nickname became Cabbage.

It's not really the most flattering nickname. I mean, I've got nothing against cabbage, but I don't know that it necessarily screams superstar. I think my favorite of the ones you tweeted is Andrelton Simmons. Tell us about that one. Oh, yeah uh simmons is synonymous to a very popular mattress brand i think it's called this it's literally called simmons mattress yes and because he's also a good player and because of his uh last name his nickname oh if you say it in korean it's a which translates to bad god. And something that I did not mention on the tweet is that because he feels like he's so comfortable

laying on a bed, that also works as a bad god kind of way. Bad god. I love it. So, the main reason we wanted to have you on before we were talking about player nicknames is that you wrote this article at Baseball Prospectus that you titled, How the KBO Successfully Marketed to a Bigger Younger Audience. This is, of course, a pressing issue, a seemingly pressing issue for domestic baseball and MLB

trying to attract younger audience audience trying to attract young people to the game because everyone understands that the stereotype of the American baseball fan is like a 57 year old bald white man and so baseball would like to engage with the younger audience and I I guess my first question to you is what what is the the evidence what is what is the proof that the KBO has successfully marketed to a a bigger and younger audience over the past few years? When it comes to younger, they've seen a bump. And well, number one, when you have a bump in the overall audience, they went from around overall 3 million attendance in 2006 to over 8 million by 2016. So when it comes to a bigger audience, I think a lot of it has to do with that. Well,

let's start with this. They went from around 3 million in 2006 to 8 million in 2016. And they saw a record of 8.4 million in 2017. And when you have an overall attendance that raised so high, you also see younger people go to the ballparks more. And I had to pull out an article to read the numbers because I think a stat that I saw in 2015 or an article from 2015 is that 23.5% I believe of all attendance from that year is women in their 20s and 23.4% of all attendance is men in their 20s. So if you do the math, around 40% of everyone that attended the KDO games in 2015 are in their 20s, which I believe is a very significant number. When it comes to the wider audience, well, let's put it that way. The KBO traditionally had been a very male-dominant role in nature. It was known for a crowd culture

where people, like back in the 80s on drunk men would get really pissy and actually like threatened players right by the bus if they have a bad game or like break windows and all the other kind of stuff, but after the success that the Korean national national team saw in 2006 with the World Baseball Classic and the gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, you start to see more mainstream popularity with the sport and the league. And with that also came more female audience that came to the ballpark. And I said this earlier that the biggest demographic of people that came to ballpark by 2013 was women in their 20s so that's an evidence for the more diverse gender mix and audience in

the KBO attendance growth yeah so I'll ask you about some of the methods and some of the ways that they've done that before we get to that can you give people a very quick intro to kbo which was kind of your first article for bp just sort of laying out you know how long it's been around and how many teams there are and roughly what the level of play is or the style of play sure um the kbo stands for korea baseball organization the league started in 1982 with six teams and as of 2019 there are ten teams. Not really gonna list all them right now but what you need to know is that the overall revenue has grown, obviously the amount of

teams has grown and the thing is that I believe South Korea is it's a country with the landmass just smaller than Indiana so to have a 10 baseball professional franchises in that small of a land is pretty um in my opinion pretty mind-boggling but they made it work and in terms of the um actually I should mention this before I get to the style of play in terms of how they run the team. Every 10 teams, all the 10 teams besides one are all owned by big corporation conglomerates. You have the LG twins, obviously owned and operated by the LG corporation, the Samsung Lions, Samsung, the Kia Tigers, the Kia and Hyundai Motors, obviously, the NC Dinos owned and operated

by the NCSoft, the computer game corporation. The exception of this rule is the Kiwoom Heroes, which is a team that is formerly known as the Nexen Heroes. The Heroes, you might have heard of the Heroes because they've recently produced two Major League Baseball players in Jeongho Gang and Byungho Park. Anyways, the Heroes are the only club in the league that's their own baseball entity. They changed their name from Nexen to Kiwoom because their naming contract with the Nexen Tyres Corporation ended in 2018 and the Kiwoom Corporation took over starting 2019. So that's one of the ways that they operate their baseball team. And as for the style of play, since 2014, that's like actually the exact year where

this phenomenon occurred. The league has turned to be quite offense friendly, which is an interesting thing because actually as recently as 2012 and 2013, the league was actually really pitching friendly. And this is something that I do plan to look into in one of my next few articles for the baseball prospectus. But as of this moment, the league is quite offense-friendly, and they've come up with some measures to see if they can combat it, such as increasing the size of the strike zone and all that kind of stuff. But I want to say that it's really shown a minimal effect to it. I think at the end of the day, it just comes down to the talent of the league

kind of skewered to the offensive side. When we look at Japanese players who are coming over to the major leagues, there's always a lot of attention put on the giant media scrum that follows them around or the amount of attention that they get back home. And is there anything that's similar in Korea? Like, is there an entire community of people who are paying close attention to Hyunjin Ryu? Are people really excited about the fact that G-Man Choi looks like he's going to be lined up for regular playing time in in Tampa Bay what is you you had mentioned that there aren't a whole lot of people in Korea who who are like devout major league baseball fans but is there the same sort of support for a a nationally born player who is playing in the major leagues yes i would say yes but at this

moment hyunjin ryu is the only money player from korea that's playing in the major leagues right now i mean the reason is number one people are already very familiar with who he is as a 19 year old in 2006 he exploded into the league with the rookie of the year and MVP award so he's been a star since like the day one of being a pro and his posting process and signing with the Dodgers got a lot of media attention of course and because uh he's been a likable star and someone that people have been paying attention since he was a rookie in Korea. People also pay a lot of attention to his success or his injuries that he suffered over the years. And recently, his playoff performance with the Dodgers very closely. As far as guys like Jimin Choi, people are not as familiar with him because he started his pro career in the United States.

I think if he started his career in the KBO and went over to the U.S. via posting or free agency, then he would get more attention. Also, he's not really as much of a media darling as Ryu is because Choi has a history of being caught with the PEDs in the past. And I know that in general consensus in America is that PED suspensions are, well, they're generally frowned upon, let's call it that. But it's even more strictly frowned upon in Korean audience from what I've observed. So you wrote about three main ways in which the increase in popularity that you wrote about has happened. So you mentioned attracting more female fans,

and then there's also the affordability of going to KBO games and the atmosphere at KBO games, which sounds incredible. So tell us a little bit more about those things, about just how much it costs to go to a game compared to in the US, for instance, and then just what it's like to be at a game and how the atmosphere differs. Oh, boy. Let's start with the cost. I mean, some of my first Major League I mean, some of my first baseball games were major league ball games i

used to live in baltimore area in the mid 2000s and you know they're not really great teams but the tickets are still not really walking the park let's let's call it that way and then i went to college uh right by dc so i got to go to a lot of Nationals games and I think I had to pay like 50 60 dollars to get like decent infield seats to get close to the actions after all that I Came back to Korea and then or visited Korea and vacations and discovered that I could get infield seats Really close to the action for around 10 to 15 dollars of worth of money at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul and also at Jamsil Stadium they have this section called the exciting zone which is placed right next to the bullpen by

the dugout and the foul grounds so as far as the infield action is concerned you're as close as you can be without really interfering with the players and according to my calculations they cost around 18 to i think i mean conversion rate commercial rates differ but like 20 worth of money so 20 you're pretty darn close to the action and at jamsil stadium you can also get a big bottle of Height or OB beer for like $3 worth of money. So for a total of $23, you can get a really good seat right by the infield or foul grounds and a nice drink for a brawl game. If you want to add food, obviously it's going to cost more. Food depends on what you prefer. I've seen like a pack of fried chicken for two people be sold at like $15 to $20 worth

of money. So that's not really as cheap, but I still think that's not a bad deal. But even if you add all the food costs and all that, it still will be quite, quite cheaper than how you would spend if you were to go to a major league baseball game, especially if you calculate the cost of drinks and food. Or if you want to buy a gear, that's even going to cost a lot more as well. So affordability is a huge aspect of people like me or any age range be able to say yes to go to a baseball game without really having to empty their wallets.

Right. So you had mentioned before that in a study that you found, women in their 20s accounted for about 24% of the attendance at Korean baseball games and men in their 20s also accounted for about 24% of total attendance at Korean baseball games. So I don't have numbers in front of me for what situations look like domestically. I don't know what the numbers are for Major League Baseball. I would assume that they are not quite the same. But you have observed that not only is the KBO doing a good job of marketing to female fans,

but also that they have seen a surge in female support in the last few years. So what are the different things that you've seen the KBO doing in order to attract the female fan base? One of the things that I've noticed is that the teams have done really well in making the jerseys or other gears that are geared towards the female audience. I wrote in the article, as an example, the LG Twins have collaborated with Hello Kitty to make their own exclusive Hello Kitty gears. And I think the general reaction was pretty positive with that. When I go to LG Twins ballgames, I actually see a decent amount

of Hello Kitty jerseys or gears that women like to rock around. Actually, I just wanted to mention this. This is not really about women, but the LG Twins also have collaborated with Star Wars to come up with their own Star Wars gears. And I actually once tweeted about it and see Trent Rosecrans, who writes about the red for the athletic,

saw that and he and I messaged about me shipping those Star Wars gears to him and he really he really liked them I actually got to ship that some of those to him he got to pay me back on PayPal yeah send me some next time too but anyways on back to female fan base I think the KTta also has come up with like a nail polish with team logos for women fans pink jerseys all the kind of stuff i don't really have a lot of examples in front of me right now on the internet so i cannot really come up with all them but once you go to a ballpark and once you see women fans, sometimes you can see the difference of what they were and what male fans were.

And you can see how much the teams have made effort to come up with gears that attract women's aesthetics more, if you will. And you mentioned in your article, just more women-friendly and family-friendly facilities at the ballparks. So yeah, it just seems like, I mean, I know there are women fans of baseball in the US who think that, you know, well, they don't need pink hats and pink jerseys. You know, we could appreciate the game in the way that men can or anyone else can. But, you know, maybe there's a segment of the fan base that at least it shows that you are interested, that you are welcoming this huge portion of the potential audience into your game and not just excluding it and just wanting drunk guys to come

to your games. That's not a great atmosphere. So what about that atmosphere? I asked you about it earlier, but I want to hear all about just the chants and the loudness and why it seems so much more engaging in person than a Major League Baseball game does. Sure. So each team has their own cheerleading squad. I think, I mean, it depends on a game but four uh female cheerleaders and one guy who is labeled as the cheer master and he is basically the maestro of the orchestra he knows all the moves he he knows how to he knows all the chance and he knows how to get the crowds pumped up and more often than not the most popular sections at the ballgames are the cheering sections where people can just follow along the cheering action more closely.

And as far as the chants go, most of the hitters in the team has their own chant songs. And it's actually pretty amazing sometimes because a lot of those chant songs from what I've observed are paradigmed from popular songs that are out there. actually pretty amazing sometimes because a lot of those chan songs from what i've observed are parodied from popular songs that are out there for instance i believe i'm trying to think of an example the catcher for the lg twins uh yu gangnam his chan song is actually spoofed from the edge of glory by lady gaga so you know that's a song that everyone knows. And they turned it into a chance song that's very catchy and easy to repeat. And the chance song for I'm trying to think of a foreign player, the LG twins use the same chance song for three consecutive foreign hitters, I believe I think they use the Genghis Khan song by Genghis Khan for Roberto Patagini, Brad Snyder, and Luis Jimenez. And I think in

some instances, teams actually write their own songs for player chance. I think KT Wiz actually does a lot of that. And the upside of that is that in an event where the music companies decide to demand more money for the copyright of those songs. They didn't really have to deal with it. And that actually happened in 2018. And a lot of the KDO teams had to scrap some of the cheer songs because they didn't, I guess, you know, the league didn't really want to pay the additional royalty to the

music companies. One of the things that the Marlins are going to be doing, the Marlins are planning to introduce a fan section where you're allowed to bring flags and noisemakers. And in your opinion, do you think that that section is likely to be successful? Do you think that when you go to a major league baseball game, there are just fans who have the capacity for that kind of atmosphere? Or are you going to need some sort of more, I don't know, professional urging? And I guess related to that, how long do you think that it could take for a section like atmosphere or are you going to need some sort of more i don't know professional urging and i guess

related to that how long do you think that it could it could take for a session like that to become successful given that people just aren't accustomed to trying to make that much noise and create that kind of atmosphere in an american game it has to be baby steps because it is i mean i think this is not only limited to the cheering atmosphere this is also um applicable to many other things when you're trying to introduce a new thing into some new like unfamiliar thing to something that is kind of well established in my personal personally i hope that marlin's cheer section thing succeeds and it shows the rest of the major leagues that hey cheering can be done this way fans can enjoy themselves like this you don't have to be just sitting down drinking beer and just cheer occasionally in the big parts of the

game you can just cheer all the time you can you can turn your ballpark experience to a very high energy one like going to a CrossFit class I mean it's not exactly like that but at the end of the day, the difference between actively being involved in cheering and just sitting around is massive, especially in terms of like endorphin, all the chemicals in your brain. I just personally feel that you just feel much more satisfied with your game experience when you're able to sing along, chant, shout, move around, than just sitting around and not really doing anything but watching. And I think this can also be something that's profitable for the Major League Baseball. They can sell separate gears for cheering. They can introduce wider cheering sections where people will definitely try to buy more tickets in the seat,

make it more competitive for people to try to cheer can try to like buy more tickets in the seat, make it more competitive for people to try to get to cheer, all that kind of stuff. I don't know. That's just an idea that I have. And it's right now, in theory, part of the things. But I think in general,

psychologically, people like being involved and people like having fun. Yeah. And that's a reason to come to the game as opposed to just sitting at home and watching. I mean, apart from the fact that you can actually afford to go to the game and buy tickets and buy food, just being able to be in that in-stadium atmosphere. I mean, right now, for a lot of people in baseball, it's like, well, I could go to the game, but I could also just sit on my comfy couch and watch the game on my giant TV. And you're not really missing that much in many cases, whereas it sounds like the KBO has really made the game an in-person experience

in a way that would encourage people to buy tickets instead of just watching from afar. So we're talking to you now after 1 a.m. your time. You are used to this doing interviews at least. And I would imagine that you are also used to this just to watch baseball. So what kind of commitment does it take to live in Korea and to pay attention to American baseball or to live in the US and pay attention to Korean baseball? What kind of staying up at all hours have you had to do to pay attention to both? You know, it's actually pretty amazing. I get double dose of baseball every day. You know,

I pay very close attention to both Major League Baseball and the KBO. So the regular day for me is like, I wake up at around 7am and around 8am. That's when the 7pm Eastern Eastern Time game start. So I get my fix very early on in the day and by like 1pm or 2pm the Pacific time zone games are over. And then I'll wait for a few hours and around 6.30pm the KBO game start. And that's the weekdays and during the weekends it's a little trickier because if I want to watch a 1 p.m. afternoon game so I have to stay up at 2 a.m. and you know I actually do that quite often because for me it's worth it I love watching the Major League Baseball I love I mean I just I just think I just love it watching baseball in general but it gets trickier in the weekends as well when they have 2 p.m.

games in the afternoon in the afternoon for KBO because when I watch the 2 p.m. games in the afternoon for KBO because when I watch the 2 a.m. games, I probably fall asleep around 6 a.m., 7 a.m., and then I get my sleep. Sometimes I sleep past 2 p.m. if I'm really tired. Most of the time, I manage to wake up and be able to watch the afternoon KBO games for that day. It's been quite awesome, to be honest,

and I don't know how many people would agree with me on this, but I personally am glad that I get a double dose of baseball that I pay very close attention to. And being able to be literate to the KBO has been a big advantage for me when it comes to not only my hobby, but also my career. Because I feel like there has not been a lot of writings out there that concentrate on Korean baseball. But when it comes to Japanese baseball, we have really great writers like Jim Allen, Mr. Jason Coskery, and

also Kazuro Yamazaki doing really good work out there. When it comes to the KBO, I was surprised at first that there hasn't been much writing out there for the American audience besides by some media posts, many media posts by an excellent Mr. Dan Kirch who runs the MyKBO account. Yeah, I know that at least in my own experience, so much of what gets written about the KBO is generally about, well, who are the best players in the KBO who might be coming over to the major leagues? And then so that sort of addresses the KBO to a certain extent, but it doesn't really give the league its due. I was curious because you pay such close attention to both the major leagues and the KBO that we can sit here and talk about how, okay, the KBO has become an offense-friendly league. And the atmosphere is incredible.

Everybody's involved. But what I don't have access to, and I don't know if you have access to, is the numbers of how the games work, how fast they are, how slow they are. And because you were paying attention to both leagues, are there, assuming the KBO operates around a similar pace as Major League Baseball, are there similar concerns being talked about regarding pace of play? Does anybody care about pace of play in the KBO? Does it move along faster? I would imagine the games are slower because there's so many more runs.

The strikeout rate is lower than it is in Major League Baseball. But nevertheless, it is still baseball. It's always going to be baseball, and baseball tends to take a long time. So is there any of that conversation in Korea about the sport? Yes, there have. I think at some point they did institute a pitch clock, and I don't think that's really worked out really well. But I do think pitchers do get warnings when they take too much time between pitches. And I do believe the idea of increasing the strike zone was all like that was also like one of the reasons why they put that measure was to try to shorten the game time and pace of play.

And for like in 2017, for like the first few months, it actually kind of did work. But after the all-star break or around then, hitters kind of like learn how to like adapt to it and figure out how to get their bats going against the zone. And in the end of the season, a lot of the numbers just kind of regressed back to the norm. So I think baseball, I think it kind of is a universal thing about the pace of play. I don't believe it's been as much of a concern in the KBO because the league has been thriving in popularity for the past decade or so. So I have one more question for you. You were born in Korea and then you moved to the U.S. and grew up here as a kid as well. And so you were introduced to KBO first and then MLB. Is one of them kind of closer to your heart than the other at this point? Or are they about equal? And when you go from

watching one to watching the other, is it generally the same level of enjoyment for you, the same sort of experience in that, you know, the quality of play, the competition level is obviously higher in MLB? Does that make a difference? I mean, if there's an error or something in a KBO game, or you see pitchers throwing not as hard, does that make you enjoy the game any less? Or is it just two different styles and you love them both? I don't want to say I do love them both, but I do love them both for different reasons. Obviously, Major League Baseball is a higher level of play.

You see more athletic freaks compete in the game of baseball. And I think that's beautiful. And I've gotten a chance to cover being in a press box in several major league baseball games. And they've all been very thrilling experiences for me personally. Not only I got to be paid to be on a press box, watch a baseball game, write an article that I'm, that I was interested in writing and, but also like got to go to the locker room and sometimes got to talk to some of these athletic gene freaks that

I have such pleasure watching on the field. When it comes to being a fan and watching the game, I do have, it has occurred to me a few times that because the cheering culture is so different and I grew up with the KBO cheering culture, things can get a little slow. Sometimes I have to buy an extra beer, extra snack just to keep myself entertained. Sometimes I meet my friends and I explain to them all the nerdy things that I know about the player, but they don't really care what I say. I still love the Major League Baseball. And I guess since I studied journalism back in college, I've always made a goal to be

like, you know, to be like you two actually in the future or be like a beat writer for a major baseball game team. I think it would be awesome for me to be able to cover teams like the Red Sox or the Yankees or the Nationals or even the Orioles. I would love to work, call Camden Yards my workplace in the future. When it comes to the KBO, there's the level of play that's not really as obviously not as great as the MLB, but because of the recent attention that's been put by the people who are more familiar with the MLB, thanks to the players that played in KBO that went over to the states like Hyunjin

Ryu, Jaegyun Hwang, Jung Ho-gang, Byungho Park, and all those people, I think people in the states are starting to treat KBO like it's a bit more relevant to their interests. And that's happened so fast that i honestly do not recall what it was like before guys like hyunjin ryoo went to the major leagues and honestly like i also really do appreciate kdo in that they really do very well in making the fan experience very fun it's become quite family friendly in the past several years. I mean, that's also one of the measures that they did in increasing the diversity of the audience. I didn't really talk about it in their article, but that's one of the things they did. And also, in the end, it's

baseball. When I was growing up watching baseball, I didn't really care about the velocity or the command or the exit velocity or the spin rates or the launch angles and all that kind of stuff. I just love watching baseball. And even though the numbers are very important to me in the part of watching baseball right now, even if they took away the numbers, I still love the game. And that's what KBO is to me. Something that I've watched since I was literally a baby. And I still watch it daily, religiously, at age 28. So the KBO, its own league, of course, and it deserves to be recognized for its place as its own league.

But of course, many of the people listening to this podcast are fans of Major League Baseball. As fans of Major League Baseball, we're all necessarily at least a little bit myopic. And there was a run there where you mentioned the players, but over a few years years we saw Daeho Lee, Byungho Park, Jaegun Hwang, Hyunsoo Kim, Seunghwan Oh, Jungho Gong come over to the major leagues and have varying degrees of success coming from Korea so the obvious question and the last question is are there players in the league right now that you think are most likely to eventually come over try to come over to the major leagues and and would be most likely to have some success against domestic

competition the obvious answer at this moment is the outfielder for the nc dinos named na sung bum and he's a he's a power hitting outfielder he's been he's also been able to hit over 300 for many seasons and i believe this is going to be his age 30 season and he's also been able to hit over 300 for many seasons. And I believe this is going to be his age 30 season and he's going to be eligible to be posted after the 2019 season. And he's also physically a very muscle. He's a very muscle like kind of guy. He's also he was also a former lefty pitcher back in college.

So he's also got an arm from he's got a good arm from the outfield and you know so if you put together his bat his arm and his overall um physic and athleticism i think that's a very intriguing prospect you got there but he does have flaws in the game that i think scouts will balk at he doesn't really have the greatest plate discipline. I've seen a lot of the instances where he would fail against breaking balls that are below the zone. And I do think he will strike out a lot. He will strike out even more if he were to face the major league pitching. And also defensively, even though he's athletic, because he has not really been a full-time outfielder for such a long time. He can make really weird routes or make defensive miscues or just doesn't really look like he belongs in the outfield sometimes. But I still do think at the age of 30,

he has room to grow in parts of the game. And actually, that's what Eric Sames told me when I asked him about the players that he thinks that would work out in the Major League Baseball. Sames and Na Sung-beom were teammates for three years that Sames was in. So he got to follow Na Sung-beom's growth while they were teammates. And I think Sames kind of likened Na Sung-beom's game to Sh his sins to choose in that they're both speedy they both have power and they can hit for average but um i think the main difference between chu and na

is that chu can chu has a really good plate discipline and he doesn't i mean and he probably doesn't strike out as much as how much not would in the major leagues and song bomb also didn't really have a great 28 he had a good season but not a great one so he's going to need a really big 2019 season to be able to get some some good posting fee for the major league baseball team to get him so he's one guy i think he's like the only player that i can see that i can see try to head to the major leagues in the next few weeks, next year or two. A lot of the talents that I think has a potential to be in major leagues are actually years

away. Like we're talking about players who are like 20 years old, 22 years old, 23 years old, but they're like years away from being able to be posted or be a free agent so um i think nasang boom might be the last one from the kbo well korean-born kbo to the major leagues for like a few years so i think there will be a lot of spotlights on his posting after the 2019 season from the korean. And it'll be interesting to see how he does in 2019 to make his case to be a major league player. Also, he signed to Scott Boras.

That's an interesting one. He's actually right now currently training in LA at the Boras facility to get ready for the season. All right. Well, we will leave you. I just want to mention a couple of nicknames that we didn't get to mention before. There is Josh Hamilton,

nicknamed Spicy Seafood Stew, because Hamilton sounds similar to the term Hamilton, which means... Oh, you nailed it. Did I? Okay. You nailed it, yeah. And then Dustin Ackley,

College Hitter is his nickname. That's a good one, too. That is accurate. I mean, that's not really meant to say that his skill is just like of a college hitter. It was more that he had a legendary college career that people just remember him for. People remember him mostly for his performance back in North Carolina, Chapel Hills. Right. Yeah. Well, works either way. And Joey Votto, Teacher of Walking. mostly for his performance back in North Carolina, Chapel Hills. Right.

Yeah. Well, works either way. And Joey Votto, teacher of walking. That's a good one too. That's self-explanatory. Yeah. And then Craig Kimbrell is Kim Balls. It's just basically what it sounds like.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to go into the not safe for work details in this podcast. You can just read my tweet instead. Okay. Yes. And I recommend that everyone do that and follow on Twitter at Sungmin Kim. Well, there's an underscore after the Sung, but you can also read weekly, I guess, or very regularly at Baseball Perspectives. I will link to his archive there as well as The Athletic and elsewhere.

at Baseball Prospectus. I will link to his archive there as well as The Athletic and elsewhere. Thank you very much for being such an informative source on KBO and coming on to talk about it. Thank you. Honestly, it has been like a bucket list thing for me to be on the podcast. I remember going to a Pits Talks event in 2017

and watching the live podcast recording at a bar in Brooklyn and I was in awe of just to be there. Yeah, that was a fun Fernando Perez episode. recording at a bar in Brooklyn, and I was in awe of just to be there. Yeah, that was a fun Fernando Perez episode. That was a good day. All right. Well, thanks again. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, after we finished recording this episode, we got some sad but not surprising news about former guest and friend of the show, Oliver Drake. Jeff and I talked about the signing of Avisel Garcia the other day by the Tampa Bay Rays. Well, guess who was designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man for Garcia?

That's right, Oliver Drake. Once again, teamless. We'll see whether he clears waivers or whether he gets traded again. But it's just unbelievable. I mean, we're now like three moves past the point where it just got ridiculous. You just have to feel for the guy and his wife. Twice now this offseason, he's been back with a team that had him already this year, and twice he's been cast loose again.

Just an incredible odyssey. I hope he gets a book out of this someday at least. We will, of course, keep you updated on his whereabouts. All right, so that will do it for today. Thank you for listening. And thanks to all of those of you who have already pre-ordered my book with Travis Satchik, The MVP Machine. It has been the best-selling baseball book on Amazon for about a day now.

That's just the hardcover. A lot of people buying the Kindle copy too. So that is very gratifying. We appreciate your faith and your trust. You have not seen a word of the book yet. You are taking our word for it that it will be good. And I think and hope it will. And I think you'll enjoy it.

But I appreciate you for taking that leap of faith. And thanks to those of you who have supported the podcast. We hope that you will continue to do that too. The following five people are among them. They have gone to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and pledged some small monthly amount to keep us going. David Meyer, Jay Swift, Michael Carver, Nick Feely, and Nathan Hui. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. And you can

rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance and we will be back with another episode very shortly these will just be rapid fire releases here since we're at the end of the week already so talk to you soon Outro Music