Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1533: It’s Baseball O’Clock Somewhere

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about beverage consumption, foreign baseball leagues’ potential for popularity in the U.S., and the life and death of legendary flamethrower Steve Dalkowski, who passed away this week. Then they talk to Rob Liu of CPBLStats.com (25:48) and Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net (58:22) about two leagues that have beaten MLB […]

Sometimes I feel like Adam, cause I've got more than I need But even when I have it all, I want what's out of reach Maybe I should learn my lesson, like Steve was talking to me He said I wouldn't lie, you should not go to that tree The serpent knows the apple grows from a forbidden seed. Oh, you want what you can't have, but you've got all the things you need. There was Adam, there was Eve, and there was Steve. Hello and welcome to episode 1533 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought

to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm not bad. How are you? I'm doing all right. Yeah. Drinking a lot of tea. Good.

And I'm wondering if you can drink too much tea. Oh gosh. From my Googling, it seems like you can't really drink too much tea for at least the kind of tea I'm drinking. I'm drinking green tea and it sure seems like you cannot necessarily OD on green tea. I don't know. Don't take my word for that. Ask Anthony Fauci or something.

But I have not seen really hard evidence that I am hurting myself with the amount of tea I am drinking right now. But it's hard not to when you're stuck inside all day and you're just kind of going from your computer to the place where you have tea to back to your computer. And it's very easy to just keep refilling. But the nice thing about tea is that it's very tough to get addicted to it, at least in my experience. It's not like coffee, which I think when a lot of people hear that I have this strange sleep schedule and I'm up at all hours and then I tell them I don't drink coffee, they say, how do you do it? You don't drink coffee. And then I tell them I don't drink coffee. They say, how do you do it?

You don't drink coffee. And I'm scared to drink coffee because I feel like I'd get so dependent on it that I'd very quickly become a caffeine fiend and I'd be unable to function without it. And I don't want that to happen. But it seems like tea is a low enough level that I can just kind of constantly sip it. And yet if I don't have it for a while, I'm fine. And I don't get caffeine headaches or anything like that. So I recommend tea. Yeah. I don't know what it would be like to be like an anthropomorphized rocket ship. I don't know exactly what it would be like to be able to blast off from the earth with a force sufficient to send human beings to the moon.

But I have something of an idea because you really do know when you've had too much coffee because your heart starts to pound and you feel like you're going to blast off into space and you get tunnel vision and your head hurts. And so you do get those physical signifiers, but they are very unpleasant. And then tapering from there is also unpleasant. And so I think that your approach is is good and um you should stick with it yeah that's the hard stuff yeah you want to you want to stick away from that ben because you don't sleep enough but you might just never sleep and that would be that would be very bad we need you to we need you to stick it out, buddy. I will remain a teetotaler, so to speak.

All right. So we are doing two interviews today, which I hope will be informative for everyone right now. Because one of the nice things is that when I am up at odd hours, there's sometimes baseball going on right now. And it's a nice period that there's any kind of baseball happening. And that is courtesy of the Chinese Professional Baseball League, the CPBL. So high-level professional baseball is being played in Taiwan now, and it's being streamed in English. And I know that a lot of our listeners have been paying attention to that. And the Korea Baseball Organization, KBO, is about to be back,

coming back on May 5th. And so because it's the only baseball we have right now, I think a lot of people are maybe more interested in that than they normally would be. And to fill that need, we're talking to two experts, Rob Liu, who is the person behind CPBL Stats website and GoCPBL on Twitter, and Dan Kurtz, who runs the MyKBO site and the MyKBO Twitter account. So they're going to fill us in on why we should pay attention and what we should pay attention

to and who are the players and who are the teams and what are the ongoing storylines because it's baseball. It's very recognizably baseball in a comforting way, but it's also a different league and it's tough to just start watching a league like that without any preparation. It's like starting a TV show in season six or something and you have no idea what's going on and you don't even have it previously on and who are these characters and what is this show actually like? And so helpful to have a primer, I think, and that's what this episode is primarily for. Yeah, I am envious of people who are in time zones that are a little bit more conducive to checking out some of these games that have been streaming. It's kind of brutal in Pacific time,

but I think that my desire for baseball and my aforementioned tolerance for coffee might mean that I just tough it out one of these days because, you know, you get, I think it is good to be careful when observing something that is new to you to not, you know, make it twee or strange, but the cardboard cutouts of people and the mascots and the cheerleaders to know there's some deeply Meg stuff going on here. So I'm going to need to engage with it in a more serious way. And also, it's just really great to get to see baseball. And I hope that we get some of this KBO stuff figured out because, you know, there's just there's so much baseball when Major League Baseball is in season the way that we are used to and the way that it

ought to be. And we do not necessarily do the diligence that we really should on leagues that exist all around the world, some of which end up supplying players to the majors. And it would be, it would sure be nice to have, you know, known about Ryu before he was getting ready to be posted in a more meaningful way. So I hope that we get, you know, it's weird to talk about silver linings in this time, but I hope that one of the silver linings is that we do a little diligence that we probably should have been doing all along.

Yep, they've got robot fans. Forget robot umps, they've got robot fans in Taiwan. Yeah, it was just like, you know, someone sat up in the sky and said, how can we design a maximally strange experience? And then that person decided to be cruel and vindictive and put it at a time when I really ought to be sleeping. It is a shame that we are not going to get to experience the fan environment in either of those leagues because we're so stuffy and boring here. And we could enjoy baseball so much more and in such a lively way.

And we decide not to. And I think if we showed people a little bit of fun, then they might be less stuffy about it. But, you know, obviously, public safety must be our primary concern here. So robot fans and the cheerleaders to no one, Ben. There's no one there. Right. Yeah, there's a lot we can learn. It's kind of a cultural exchange program.

And I think there's a lot we can learn about the style of baseball that's played in those places. And also the fact that they are capable of playing baseball right now without terribly endangering anyone. That's something that we talk about too. So hopefully we can follow in their footsteps. So we did along those lines, get a question from Patreon supporter Matthew, who said, what do you think it would take for English broadcasts of overseas leagues for them to garner a meaningful following among North American baseball fans? And I think he's specifically wondering about CPBL, KBO, but we've gotten this question before about winter leagues and why aren't those broadcast in a more accessible way? And can we really build up a following for those leagues? And we may have

addressed that before, but I don't know. Do you think there is any long-term or even short-term now in the absence of Major League Baseball way that those leagues could be more than a novelty, I guess, for people who are used to MLB? I think that, yeah, I think so. I don't know that the audience would ever quite be the same in terms of the scale as Major League Baseball. I think that the language barrier is a pretty easily surmountable one. I do think that it is useful. It's much easier to follow the narrative of a game if the booth is speaking in a language that is more familiar to you. This is why I think it's really great when

major league teams make sure to have a Spanish language broadcast because you want to be able to reach people in the language that they sort of understand sport in best. But yeah, I think that the viewing audience across all entertainment is so fractured. But if you give people something interesting and dynamic and you have a fun fan experience that you can kind of feel coming through the TV, I know that when the Mariners played the A's in Japan, you could feel it from the Tokyo Dome. It was incredible. So I think that there's definitely space for it. I think that it'll be trickier should play resume in the US because the sort of average level of play is higher even with teams

like the Tigers and the Orioles. And so I think that the quality of baseball may have some effects there, but I do think that people will be interested. And I really still don't have a great answer for why we don't broadcast more baseball from the winter leagues because,, I think, would be really appealing to a lot of folks. So yeah, I'm optimistic. bias against sports from other countries or just likes the baseball that they know. And it would really take some persuading or the absence, the extended absence of the baseball they know to get into a state of withdrawal where they'll just take any baseball and then maybe they'll give it a chance and they'll figure out that they like it. But I don't know. Sam answered this Patreon supporter and he thinks there's a pretty small number of really hardcore baseball geeks like us and like the listeners of this podcast. Maybe many of them or most of them are already listening to this podcast because I know that a lot of people in our Facebook group, for instance, are watching and talking about these streams and having game threads.

And I just I don't know that that's something that will catch on in a huge way. Maybe if ESPN does start broadcasting these things, then people will kind of come to it casually. But Sam was saying that he thought it would take like a lot of American baseball players joining that league for some reason, and that that would provide the hook or the continuity that people would get into that. So if MLB couldn't continue, let's say this year or next year or something, and they could only go over and play in Japan or Korea or Taiwan, and maybe then you'd have people tuning in just to see the familiar faces and personalities. But otherwise, he is pretty pessimistic, I think,

about it catching on in a big way. I mean, look, I hope we get the baseball that we know and love back soon. And not that people abandon these other leagues, but that it won't be the only option for them. But people like us who love it and are hooked, they will watch almost any kind of professional baseball, especially if it's the only option for them. It's just hard for me to put myself beyond that bubble and say that someone who is just kind of consuming baseball the way that your average sort of casual fan does would actually take the initiative to watch a stream of Korean or Taiwanese baseball. I don't know if that might

be a bridge too far. I mean, there are lots of baseball fans who watch only their team, right? And don't tune into other teams' games. So would those people tune in to see Taiwanese baseball? Maybe if you took their team away, but still, I don't know. Yeah, my optimism might explain my surprise at how our traffic numbers fell after the season was postponed. I'm gaining some insight into myself, Ben. I'm learning something about

the old Meg. And I can't believe that Sam would insult Dan Straley and Adrian Samson that way. Is that... Are Dan and Adrian not enough for you, the viewing public? Yeah, maybe not. Maybe not.

But anyway, I'm sure that a lot of people listening to this podcast right now would enjoy it. So give it a shot and we arm you with the information you need later in this episode. So just the only thing I wanted to bring up before we get to our guests is that Steve Dalkowski died. He died, seems like, on Sunday, but it was reported on Friday. And Dalkowski, I don't know that we've talked about him ever at length on this podcast, but if we had somehow been recording Effectively Wild in the late 50s and early 60s, he would have been like the patron saint of this podcast probably. We would have talked about him every day the way that we've talked about William S. Tio or Shohei Otani, because he is just one of these larger-than-life figures. He was 80 years old, and he passed away from the coronavirus, but he had had some underlying health issues for years, and he lived a very hard life off the field. He partied hard. He drank hard. He had an alcohol abuse problem for

years, and he was suffering from dementia in his later years that was brought on by those years of alcohol abuse. sensational player, like right up there with fictional players like Roy Hobbs or Sid Finch, of course, Nukla Lush, who he inspired. So for people who don't know his story, he was, can't even say a hard throwing, he was like the hard throwing pitcher. And he was signed by the Orioles in the late 50s as an 18 year old, and he just has stat lines that you will never ever see anyone else ever have again, and no one else has ever had. He, according to seemingly everyone who ever saw him, was just the hardest thrower who has ever been. They called him White Lightning, and the pitches weren't just fast, but they moved a ton. And he had thick glasses, which only added to the intimidation factor. And he was like 5'10", 5'11", 170 pounds, left-handed, not ultra-athletic looking.

So it was just this miraculous arm that didn't appear to be attached to a miraculous physique. Of course, it's very difficult to verify these things. But people who saw him and also saw pick your Hard Thrower of the day or any day, Nolan Ryan, whomever, he supposedly threw harder than any of them did. And over the decades, I think some kind of tall tales have sprung up and the legend has grown, but it certainly seems like there was a lot of fact behind that fiction. And just looking at his stats here, so I tallied really the peak Dalkowski wildness. And that was the thing. He threw harder than everyone else, but he also could not find the strike zone. So no one could hit him, but he couldn't throw strikes.

And like in high school, he pitched a 24 strikeout no-hitter. Guys wouldn't even stand in the batter's box. And he also threw an 18 strikeout no-hitter with 18 walks where he somehow didn't allow a run. He had a later no-hitter in pro ball where he struck out 21 guys, walked eight, and only threw fastballs in that game. It's just, well, wild, so to speak, if you look at his stats from 1957 through 1961, so five minor league seasons, and this was kind of all over the place, A ball, and they had B and C and D ball back then, so kind of the lower levels of the minors. He struck out 14.7 batters per nine. And again, remember, this was the 50s and the 60s when people didn't do that. So this was like leagues where people were striking out maybe five or six per nine often. And he was coming in here with like 17 Ks per nine sometimes. The only problem was to go along with those 14.7 Ks per nine. He had 16 walks per nine. So that's not what you want. And the thing is, though, that no one could hit him. So he had like five hits per nine and 0.4 homers per nine. In 57 and 58, he actually struck out or walked three quarters of the hitters he faced. So no one was really hitting him or hitting him that hard. But between the walks and the wild pitches, 1.6 wild pitches per nine, he had 6.42 ERA combined across those seasons. And sometimes it was a good deal worse than that. So it was always like, well, if he could only throw strikes, but he absolutely could not throw strikes ever, at least until 1962 or so, which is when Earl Weaver intervened. And Earl Weaver kind of figured out how to get his stuff somewhat under control. And the key was, and from all accounts, and, you know, he had an IQ test taken at the time, and it said that he was not the brightest fellow, perhaps.

taken at the time, and it said that he was not the brightest fellow perhaps, and so some of the mechanical interventions and instructions that pitching coaches would try to implement just didn't really stick with him. And Earl Weaver, the story goes, just kind of told him to take something off his fastball and not throw as hard as he possibly could, but still throw harder than anyone else did. And suddenly he kind of got under control, at least by Dalkowski standards. And suddenly he was only walking like six per nine or something, which, you know, was maybe workable with the strikeouts that he had. And so he did climb and he made it up to double A and triple A in 63. And he was in big league spring training, I think, with the Orioles.

And it really looked like he might get a shot and he might actually get things under control. And then he hurt his arm and he had like a pinched ulnar nerve. It was probably the sort of thing that you would get Tommy John surgery for today, but they didn't know that then. And when he came back, he was not the same guy and the fastball was not what it had been. And so really just as he was at the precipice of possibly making it, it all fell apart. But you look back at the legends and the stories and the stats, and I mean, he's maybe the most famous minor leaguer who never made the majors, but is famous for his baseball exploits. And it's just one of those great what-ifs. If he could have controlled himself on and off the field, could he have made it? But that was kind of the whole

key to his story was that he could not control anything. And that's what made it such an amazing story. Yeah. And obviously, he lived a lot of life in between that career and when he passed, but just a sad end to it. Another reminder for the baseball family that we are not immune to suffering in the light of all of this. Yeah. I mean, the stories, it's weird because there are all these stories, and a lot of them are possibly apocryphal. And so you hear the stories of how Ted Williams took one pitch and said it was the fastest pitch he ever saw and just stepped out of the box. But it's like one of these things that it's not totally verified and you hear it and everyone repeats it, but it's not like he is recorded saying that necessarily.

And so when you go back and read Dalkowski stories, you just keep coming across phrases like, it said that he did this or it said that so-and-so said this. But it's really tough to pin down the details no one has video of him pitching ever which seems strange in that he pitched for several years but i guess he was pitching in front of mostly small minor league crowds but still like you you get home videos of you know players from the 20s or something you'd think that someone at some point would have had some footage of steve dalcosby but it just doesn't exist. And so it's one of these things where the stats are what they are, and everyone who saw him and would be in a position to know said that he threw harder than

everyone else. But you can't see it, and you can't verify some of those stories. And so it's this kind of confounding thing where some sort of fact meets some sort of fiction. But the only time he was ever clocked at an actual velocity and people said, you know, he threw 110, he threw 115, he threw 120. And it's like, that can't possibly be true. And you have to imagine that a lot of that was exaggeration. It doesn't seem possible that this one guy could have been somehow throwing 110 even in the 60s or 50s, and no one since then has sniffed that. And the fastest players that we have reliable speeds for is like 105. Could he have actually been that great an outlier? Seems unlikely, and seems like maybe guys were just not throwing as hard in general back then. And so he stood out. But the one time that they did really try to clock him, he threw at an army base. He threw like in this laser system.

This was 1958. And they took him to the army proving ground in Aberdeen. And they had this setup where you could record the velocity of projectiles. They had this setup where you could record the velocity of projectiles. And so you'd throw this pitch through a box and it had a laser that would measure the speed as it crossed home plate. And Bob Feller was once clocked using something similar. And Dalkowski was throwing from a flat surface and I think with flat shoes. And he was throwing the day after he had pitched like 150 plus pitch outing. And he was throwing the day after he had pitched like 150 plus pitch outing.

And he couldn't locate his pitches well enough to actually get a reading on this thing. So he was throwing over and over and over again. They finally clocked one after like 40 minutes. And it said that he was throwing 93.5. But that was at speed at home plate. So you add maybe like eight miles per hour or something. So that's triple digits, and that's flat surface with a tired arm and no spikes and everything. And so you kind of do the adjustment. It's like, well, maybe it could have been true under ideal conditions. But I think that

method was somewhat inaccurate. So maybe it was a little faster than it actually was. But I kind of wish, like I want to know how hard he threw just to settle the mystery. And yet, maybe it's better not to know, like, unless we actually did have him reliably clocked at 110 or 115 or something. Like, anything in the realm of what we think of as possibility now would be kind of disappointing. You know, if it were 102 or something, like, that'd be incredibly impressive, especially for that time. But so much of it is like, well, did he actually throw 110? Is that humanly possible? So in a way, I'm kind of glad that we can't actually know the answer to that question. Yeah. Sometimes it's better to have the mystery and be able to hope on what a you know 40 minute layoff and one pitch on flat ground can

get you yeah if you look at his estimated pitch counts using the formulas that we use for that before we have recorded pitch counts he was averaging like 200 plus pitches like in 1957 it was like 229 pitches per nine innings 232 23. And that was one of the things they tried to get him to be more under control was just like tire him out and, you know, have him be too tired to throw wildly. And that just didn't work because he like had so much stamina that he couldn't do it. And it's just, you know, there are stories of him like shattering an umpire's mask with a pitch or tearing part of a batter's ear off, but he didn't actually hit that many batter which is good because then it would have been a safety issue. But man, it's just like wild stallion that couldn't be tamed kind of thing. And I wonder how much of

it was just that he had no control. Like if you took Aroldis Chapman and said, hey, you can just wildly throw this pitch wherever, maybe he could throw harder than 103 or 105 or whatever. But anyway, it's one of those absolute legends of baseball. And sorry to see him go. And sorry he had sort of a difficult post-playing career. But the story of Steve Dalkowski will be part of baseball legends forever. Yeah.

All right. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with Rob to talk about the CPPL, followed by Dan to discuss the KPL. All right, we are joined now by Rob Liu, who is the proprietor of cpblstats.com, and he also runs the Twitter account GoCPBL. Hey, Rob. Hey, thank you for having me.

So tell us a little bit about how you got into the CPBL and became one of the English language sources for information about the league and also what it's been like for there to be such worldwide interest just because CPL is the only game in town right now. Well, I've been a longtime baseball fan since I was young. I mean, I was born into a baseball family. Both of my parents, they were a huge baseball fan and then i sort of grew up going to the game and over the years you know you you sort of drifted apart but i sort of started this site back in 2015 when i found out there's not much of the the english content for for about the cpb is almost non-existent on the internet so i i saw a market and i went for it and then you know five years later still doing this yeah so as for what sort of what sort of stuff i mean it's pretty good i'm getting getting all the international attention

right now due to the coronavirus so i guess in a way i'm sort of happy to see you know because the cpb has been has always been this biggest secret little league that nobody knows about. So it's good. It's good to finally get some, you know, recognition from the international audience. If readers of Fangraphs and listeners to this podcast go to your site and look at the stat pages, they're going to find some familiar stats there like WRC plus and FIP. Where is Taiwanese baseball in terms of teams use of analytics and advanced stats? Are you out ahead of where the league is? The thing is, most of most of the team they do have some sort of tracking system installed in their home stadium. But unfortunately, those data are not available to the public. So we don't really, I'm sure the team uses it, but I don't think it's just not available to the public. So for us anyway, what we can do is we can only use the number that is available to us.

So which is a very basic stuff, you know, from the CBB official website. very basic stuff, you know, from the CBB official website. And I guess in a way, sort of, in a way, we couldn't calculate, you know, the war for positional player, because all the defensive stats are pretty much missing. We couldn't do it. Sure. So yeah, that's about it. Yeah. And in terms of the way that teams approach roster construction and on-field strategy, where would you put them in terms of their use of analytics and how it informs the way they build their teams or play the game itself you starting to see a trend i wouldn't say a trend but every now and then you start seeing they start shifting forward like you know the the second the second the second battle in the lineup

they used to back in the day used to be the assistant or bunt guy but these days you do see a lot of people who can really hit in the second slot so i guess that's a new trend i also think they also really based on base percentage as well but again i don't really work for the. I don't know what's their decision making behind setting the lineup. But this is just purely from observing. the spread of the pandemic and make it safe to bring baseball back? And is there anything that the CPBL has done that maybe MLB could learn from as it decides when and how to bring baseball back? So what the Taiwanese government did was they acted really fast all the way back in January. So we pretty much start screening all the passengers that came from China or overseas and then they always one or two step ahead.

Basically their approaches just do exactly the opposite of what the WHO is saying. And in a way it's really kind of sad because we are not part of the WHO. So we know if that happened in Taiwan if we reach to the community spray we Pretty much left to feng for ourselves. No one would be there to help us So that's why I think you got the government's a bit aggressive in this sort of in their approach to this to this matter and what the CP build have done is I think throughout spring training they still allow fan to be in there but what they did was they they installed bunch of those infrared temperature

measuring machine at the gate so it pretty much flag anything that's over a certain you know a certain degree so if for example if you're over i don't know 37.55 Celsius I don't know like in Fahrenheit but you have to convert that yourself so you know what will happen is you know you know you pretty much you can't get into the game and before before you before entering the game they'll give you hand sanitizer and they sort of want you not to get too close to each other so that's what they have been doing at the or at least during the sprint training so obviously baseball there is enjoying a new international audience as we discussed what are some of the differences whether it's rule changes or structure

that might be present between professional baseball in taiwan versus what an american audience is used to watching Major League Baseball. Okay, so the level of play in Taiwan is roughly, I'll put a high A to double A, that sort of range. Maybe on the good day, maybe on the 2.5A, but on the bad day, down to single A. But in terms of major difference, we're talking about what's a pure hitting league. So a little time you'll see team putting out 10 rounds on the scoreboard.

And in the next inning or two, they'll give everything away. Another major difference is the fan-sharing culture. So in the United States, it's all quiet. You know, people go to the game, they chatting to each other, they'll do their stuff. But in Taiwan, the game is blasted with non-stop music. So when players are bad, you have music,

theme song blasting at full volume in the back, and you got fans cheering, dancing, chanting to support their player. What has it been like for you watching games now where we've, I think, all seen the cardboard cutouts of fans that they've put in the stands there and they're trying to simulate the environment

by having piped in sound, but it's obviously very different than what you just described. What has that been like for you as a long-time observer of the league? How have you experienced that? It's pretty funny. I mean, they are pretty much doing exactly the same thing, just without a fence. So we're still getting... It's actually quite funny seeing all the cheerleaders, they're dancing, and they're just trying to entertain all the carpool fans. It makes no sense, but hey, you know what? If you're going to do it, yeah, do it.

Why not? So I guess in a way, they are trying to keep it the way as it is. But, you know, like given. So during the broadcast, you still see pretty much everything. The only difference is just without the fans. And can you tell us a little bit about the history and the evolution of the league? How did it come to be? How has it grown over time? And how popular is it in Taiwan compared to other sports? The attendance was at all-time high and the leads are expanding at first expanded to six and then expanded to seven and

Then they added another league called the Taiwan Major League which added another 14 So I think back in 1997 we have two leads and 11 active team however between however between mid 90s all the way to However, between mid-90s all the way to 2009, 2010, you know, that Lee was hit by a string of never-ending game-fixing scandal. I'm sure everybody heard about that former Brewer player, Don Ocus. He talked about his experience sort of being kidnapped by the gangster in Taiwan. So yeah, that sort of stuff happened all the time. Yeah, if anyone has not checked out the Wikipedia page for Chen Qisao, who was a player in the majors and was a highly touted prospect. And he has sort of a really wild Wikipedia page with all the entries about his throwing games or allegedly throwing games.

And then trying to come back and being expelled and banished and getting signed again. And it's just kind of an amazing story. And I was sort of disappointed that he never really panned out as a major league pitcher because he was very promising. But that was something that I guess other Taiwanese players have had some level of involvement with that kind of activity and go go back to sell that guy it broke my heart you know what that's that's all i can say i mean this is a guy who i follow him all the way to from from minor all the way to the to the major i mean i used to back in the day i used to wake up at 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning, listen to the minor league baseball radio and to listen and see how he's doing. And then later on, you find out a guy where you spent so much time invested in him, and he just turned out to be a garbage.

So, I can say it brought my heart. Seeing guys like this decided to go down that path yeah all right go back go back to the game fixing part so yes so over the year it's never ending it's just one scandal one after another one after another and essentially what it does to the league is it just keep pressing that reset button over and over again so whenever a lead start building some sort of momentum you know they try to move away from that from the scandal everything just river back to it again so we're talking about the entire team getting busted or the high tier player getting busted so to give you some idea it's a lot like every couple years a Mike Trapp or Clayton Kershaw that sort of caliber

you got busted for for scandal so this talent wise it's you know it's everything syncs to the button the attendance were all-time low I believe the lowest it got was down to a down to a thousand I think a thousand people per game and some games where I usually go to they you know only like 500 600 people at the game at the same time so this yeah attendance will all time low so after that you know all that stuff going on all the teams started to expand so we you know we're down to six and then eventually we're down to four so in nine so after that after maybe after 2009 the league started to you know they started keeping keeping themselves clean and then

with a bunch of new policy being implemented they managed to keep it clean all that time and in 2019 last last year, we have a new expansion team coming. So this is the Waytrend Dragons. They used to be a founding member, but they disbanded back in 2000 or 1999. So after 20 years, they decided to rejoin the CPBL.

So in 2021, it will be a fighting league. And for fans who are tuning in for the first time from the US, you know, it's be a fighting league. And for fans who are tuning in for the first time from the US, it's often a lot more fun when you're engaging with a new league to pick a team and decide you're a fan of that team. So if you could tell fans here in the US one thing about each of the teams in the league to make them excited and want to pick that roster as their roster of players, what would what would those things be okay so we'll be we'll begin with the defending champion so the defending champion

is the Rakuten monkeys they were formerly known as the Lamigo monkey they are a bit like the Oakland A's I believe because they they were they were a really small market team they knew they couldn't compete with other rich team in terms of financially anyway so instead of competing directly what they did was they start invest heavily in their scouting department and it worked really well for them they won like 5 championship in the last 6 seasons a few players to look out for would be Zhu Yuxian that's the guy that has been hitting all the home run lately i don't have his

stats in front of me right now but i believe he hit about seven home run in seven games so far and yeah he just he's been he's been unreal so far so far of a season the next team would be he's been unreal so far of a season the next team would be another team up north called the Fubang Guardian they are a little bit like your Dodgers a really really good lineup on paper they are really really good but they are unable to bring home that championship

so a player to look out for that organization would be Henry Sosa would be a good one. So Henry Sosa is the I guess the former Astro pitcher and who later went to pitch in the KBO and last year he had a really good performance, a strong performance

in the CPBO. He dominated the league. So which even earned him a contract back to the KBO. So this year I believe the Guardian decided to lock him down for the entire year I believe the salary was around what 500k maybe that's all that's all the salary figure so expect him to win maybe a pigeon triple crown this year next thing we have the CDBC brothers again they are this it's been a long-standing joke that we refer them as the Yankees of the CPBL.

Not because of their skill or anything but more like in Taiwan we often joke about how in Taiwan there are two types of baseball fans. Either you're a Brothers fan or you're an Anti-Brothers fan. So in that regard, they are the Yankees of Taiwan. brother's fan. So in that regard, they are the Yankees of Taiwan. A few players to look out for is Ariel Miranda. That's the former Seattle Mariners pitcher. The brother's been a lot of, I think he's currently the highest paid CPBL player, foreign player right now. So the brother paying about six or at least reportedly at least 600k a year and a few domestic player will be Lin Zhishen he will be a guy to look out for this season I mean he's this aging veteran but who can still hit. Right now he's on pace to break the CBB home run record so I believe he's only

five or six home run away and Maybe another and maybe he even have a shot to hit to reach home run 300 300 home run career home run and the next team is the Uni line down south now this team It's a little bit like your Marlins maybe a little raw talent but crippled by poor front office decision and management. So they just say I mean for example this year the CPPO implemented a new policy that each team can sign four foreign player but guess what the Union line did they just decided to stick with three so it's

almost like they don't want to win or their front office just don't care about the baseball team at all so a few players to look out for is Su Zhijie that's outfielder in that team. I firmly believe that's the guy 10 years down the track He's going to set every single CPBL hitting record in this league. So we'll see how that goes and then the last league we got the WayChed Dragon that's the expansion team they're currently in the minor league this year but I won't go too deep into it but a good prospect to look out for is Liu JiHeng

now this is a I guess you can say him is a 5 tool prospect I mean who can who can you know who can hit who can run and who can fill as well say he's a fight tool prospect. I mean, who can hit, who can run, and who can feel as well. So he's only 19 years old, got a bright future ahead of him. And can you tell us about what the league is like stylistically in comparison to the majors when it comes to the level of offense, let's say, or the tactics? How does it compare? tactics how does it compare okay so the you're not going to see a lot of bumps technically or you shouldn't be you shouldn't see that much bump in the cpbo and another thing is everybody want to put a bow in play or either swing for the fences because i think there's something about the bow back in a couple couple years ago so there is no point. There's no point to do any bunting or anything.

You just make sure you hit it as hard as you can and you'll get the best result out of it. Interesting. So that's similar to the US. There's a mysterious increase in home runs that people suspect is because of the ball. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think they made the change back in 2015.

So where the home run figure just shoot up, you just shoot all the way up. We're talking about you went for about a home run again, down to all the way up to like 2.5 at its peak at 2016 at 2.5. I don't think the lead is smart enough to do that intentionally. What I actually think was they probably want to cut courses on the bow. So when you cut courses, the manufacturer probably want to make some adjustment to meet their request. So what happened is we got a new bow, I guess, in a way. And also the lead probably didn't really do any QA on that so you know in a way it sort of lead to it just went out of control back in 2016 where you got what a tiny little player was hitting opposite field home run and was hitting like 10 opposite

field home run a season and the home run rate was like 2.5 per game and I think at one stage there's even 3 or 4 no, 3 players hitting over 400 so that's way out of control so after that season I think the league probably figured out, oh if we do something wrong

let's fix that, so I think they started to QC the bow to make sure it's up to the standard and testing regularly so you start seeing that number start falling down to a more of a reasonable range you know between 1.6 to 2 home run per game that sort of that sort of figures and it's yeah it's less ridiculous I guess a way. I guess there's something comforting about every league across the globe struggling to figure out the exact right way to manufacture their baseball. You've already mentioned Ariel Miranda

and some of the changes to roster construction with foreign-born players. Who are some of the other players who have seen time, either as prospects or major leaguers in the U.S., who folks here might recognize. Okay, so there's quite a lot this year. I mean, Ryan Carpenter, who used to pitch for the Tigers, he's pitching for the Rocket and Monkey this year. And there's also Justin Nicolino and El Salvatore Bonilla.

I hope I didn't butcher that name. So yeah, those guys, they're in Taiwan this year. And who else? For the brothers, we had Jose Depola, Ismael Roger. Both of them used to pitch for the Yankees organization. And for the uni lines, we had Josh Renneke, Don Roach, and is it Ryan Firibin? That's the knockable guy? Yeah, yeah. So those guys, they're for the union lines. You do have a few minor league prospects, but I mean, for this thing, we'll just stick with the major.

Sure. And what is the level of use've seen here in recent years? partnering up with with the I think I think he said like a local he's like a university professor or assistant professor and this sort of stuff and you do start seeing a lot more shift in these day I mean we're not talking about five-man infield or six-man infield but we do see a lot of second baseman all the way to the outfield grass and then you know where everything shifted to the right or shifted to the left that sort of stuff it happened a lot these day so they're definitely attracting stuff and they're definitely attracting things in terms of a broadcast and mainstream media it's still pretty basic you know you got your your basic slash line that's about it i mean the best you might see is OPS+. I think for once I saw a TV station actually use FIP during the broadcast, but only once. That's about it. I think they probably got a hundred phone calls saying,

oh, what the hell is this? So they decided to take it out. But that happened once. That made me really, I was so proud when I saw that. Oh, that's very good. Very good. So baseball fans are the same everywhere. I think so. But you should look at our stats notes on the online community, you know, where we start, you know, looking into more stuff. But in the mainstream media, it's about as basic as you go. So you've already mentioned the relative level of play. So you've already mentioned the relative level of play, but I'm curious if there are any players who are currently, any Taiwanese-born players, I should say, who might look to make the jump to U.S. baseball in a couple of years, maybe not immediately, but a couple of years from now. system in place to prevent our top young talent being poached by the major league system or the Japan's MPB

system. So a lot of time, you'll see high school, as soon as they finish high school, the top tier talent, they'll go overseas. So in terms of what we got left, I don't want to be too mean about it, but you just

got to live over. You got to live over in Taiwan. However, the last couple of years with the leagues, they start making improvements in terms of their salary and structure. They are more and more able to retain positional player-wise, at least. The first round overall draft pick can roughly receive about $200k including performance incentive. So, it's still not a lot of money but it should be able to retain all the players that could potentially sign for that amount of money and go to the States.

So I guess in a way it sort of contributes to why the lead turn into a hitters lead because we got all the pitchers still going out you know they're getting like 300k 500k 600k or 700k they they go out but we are able to retain all the position all the top tier positional player so the lineup are getting more and more stack and while the pitching size just it was just pretty much keep falling and falling falling every year yeah yeah so this is how this is one of the major factors that leads to the cbb of being ahead of the league and do you have a sense of how those teams are looking at how their international scouting as they look to you know whether it's npb or mlb how they're scouting for trying to

find and attract foreign-born players is going to change this year? Because obviously, we haven't commenced baseball here in the States. We probably won't for a while. There are travel restrictions. How has scouting changed for them this year? A few teams, I believe, have an international scout, or they send scouting teams to the US. But there are also a few teams that still go for the traditional method you know will go with the agent recommendation they'll send you clip or something like that and then they do their evaluation I think the Uni line is one of those team I believe those team that sent off top of my head I believe the Lamego monkeys who's now known as Rakuten Monkey they always send their scout to the US to watch to

go to the Atlantic League I believe so just trying to find gems for the midseason replacement the brothers I think they have international scout who's a former player Nick Atherton I think he probably done scouting in Dominican winter league and probably done also down in Mexico. But again, this sort of stuff, I don't know because they don't really talk about in public. So I can only assume. So are there any ongoing trends that we haven't talked about? Things that Taiwanese fans worry about with the league or excited about with the league?

Like we talk about, well, we've covered the ball, but here we talk about pace of play and tanking and all of these ways that teams are built i wonder whether there's anything similar that's kind of a frequent topic of discussion or potential rules changes maybe so pace of play one thing about cpbo game is it's very very long i mean a game would go like three and a half hour and a certain matchup you can almost go to almost four hours per game as for what are they going to do about it I mean people people complain all the time I mean it's taking way too long but the league is not doing anything about it it made no sense I mean given they do have a 12 second or 14 second pitch clock, but they never enforce it. So a few players you'll see him when he was in the gym, bases loaded, he would just stand on the mound for like minutes and then not do anything. So a lot

of time you see that and whenever you see that kind of player on the mound, just go get a cup of water or go to the toilet. And then by the time I come back, he's still on the mound. He's still having a pitch here. Other than, or for tanking-wise, this is actually a fun topic. So due to the CPP being the least structured, they're using half-season structure. So there's two half-season.

Each season, each team will play a 60 home game. So with a half season format, which lead to a very, very interesting playoff scenario. A lot of time towards the end of the season, sometimes you will see teams need to lose in order to make it to the playoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very interesting. So it's like if you win, that will put them on. You're going to have to, yeah. It's very funny. So you mentioned some of the incentives

that the playoff structure creates for teams around winning and losing. I think that the league's playoff structure is one of the places where it diverges the most from MLB. Can you give our listeners a crash course in what the postseason looks like? So there are three scenarios that might happen in the CBBL we have. Scenario number

one is if each half season is won by two different teams, then those two different teams will play in the best of seven in the tie- so that's easier scenario, scenario number 1 and scenario number 2 is if a team wins both half season then team A, that team will automatically move to the Taiwan series with a one-win advantage so the other spot will be determined by by a best of 5 playoff series between

the second and third overall best team in the standing so that's number 2 and number 3 this is a tricky one so if a team has the best overall win percentage but they didn't win either of the half season so what will happen is they will need to play a best of 5 series against one of the hot season winner with the lowest win percentage so this is where we might see you know like team might be trying to lose in order to well scenario number two and three is where we where we might see you know teams might have to lose in order to make it to the playoff wow well right. Now everyone can stop complaining that the league is getting this exposure. But has it been a source of pride nationally that the CPPL has been the first to come back?

And will that increased exposure lead to anything greater investment or more scouting or more players going there or coming here? investment or more scouting or more players going there or coming here what do you foresee and and what have the audiences been like when it comes to watching even despite the big time difference i think what will happen i mean this attention is good i mean definitely good so right now what they need to do is to ride that momentum and sort of convert as many fans as possible as they can before everybody, you know, before the MLB or MPB or KBO season come back. At the end of the day, I don't think they can. It will be a long-time thing. It will be a shortened thing.

But I think their main purpose for if what they can do is, if what they can do is if they can spread the awareness so at least people know about hey if I one day if I wake up 5 a.m or 6 a.m in the morning I know there's a baseball going on at the other end of the world where I can tune in and watch I think that's that's all you need to do that's all you need to do for as as a team and or in terms of marketing that's all you need to need to do because you got you just need to let people know there's baseball available whereas in the past you know people don't know there is a CPBO they don't know there's

a game going on so I mean they can't watch and what has been going on yeah people are aware of it and yeah I mean you just option for them maybe they don't have to look they don't have to be at the end of the day they don't have to be a diehard fan for that follow every game that know every player they don't have to do that they just need to know there is there is baseball for them if they are awake in the morning so other than your site and twitter account and the broadcast that we've mentioned is there anything else that american fans should know if they're interested in getting more information about the league or following it for the short term i say 11 sports taiwan twitter account they're pretty active there and the full-blown

guardians and the cdbc brothers both of them are they just recently set up their twitter account so you can definitely get more information there yeah just get the news from the source alright well get your news also from Rob at cpblstats.com and at gocpbl on Twitter thank you very much Rob and I'm glad that you're around to

help raise the profile of the league at a time when a lot of people over here are paying close attention well thank you for having me on the show alright we'll take another quick break now the profile of the league at a time when a lot of people over here are paying close attention. Well, thank you for having me on the show. All right. We'll take another quick break now, and we'll be right back with Dan Kurtz of mykbo.net and at MyKBO on Twitter. Hello, Dan. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you for having me. Yeah, happy to have you. Before you get us all interested or more interested in KBO, tell us a little bit about how you got interested in KBO and how you became one of the English language authorities on the league. Sure. Well, I don't know if I'd consider myself an authority. I consider myself more of a fan, but because basically what happened was 20 years ago, I went to Korea for the first time. I was adopted from South Korea at the age of four months. And then I grew up in Pennsylvania most

of my life and had never been back. I returned to Korea in the year 2000, studied abroad there, attended my first baseball game at the same time at Champs-Elef Stadium, saw Tyrone Woods, may ring a bell for some of the hardcore, hardcore Asian baseball fans, hit a monster home run, and that got me hooked. I'm a sports fan of all sports, especially baseball, so that's what made me go out to the park that day. Ended up getting hooked. There was a lack of English resources at that time 20 years ago. And there's still not a whole lot of English resources. So I thought I would try to learn Korean by also learning more about the Korean Base My Korean skills are still very basic in elementary. A shame to say, even after taking some classes, but I just figure whatever information I can find out in the Korean language, I try to put out to the fans that want to know more about that in English because there's very lack of resources. And so that's how I became. It started out as a message board back then because they were popular. came. It started out as a message board back then because they were popular. And now it is to what it is today, just a basic website with some stats and try to aggregate as much news as I can about

the league. We're going to ask some questions about the KBO and some of the players there. But before we do that, I want to ask, I think even Americans who aren't super familiar with the ins and outs of the league and the players are familiar with the really incredible atmosphere in the ballparks in the KBO, which is much more energetic and joyous than it is in some of the state settings here in the US. And I'm curious what it's been like for you as a fan of the league and an observer of the league as you've watched some of the scrimmages and intrasquads that have been broadcast on YouTube. What has it been like for you to watch KBO in empty ballparks? And how do you expect that to sort KBO in empty ballparks? And how do you expect that to sort of affect your experience of this season?

Right. From the fan perspective, again, I'm currently living in the Western United States, so I'm not physically in Korea. I've got I lived in Korea before, have gone to games. Right. The atmosphere is just incredible. Everybody asks, what's it like if you can compare it to like the american sporting atmosphere and i said the closest thing we might have to it here in the states would be going to a major college football game and just how raucous it is there at a football game that's how it is in the baseball stands and now my big question and i'm wondering and curious i haven't gotten talking to a lot of the players yet. What's it like for the players,

especially the Korean players that have played their entire career growing up in this environment now to going to one of the most sterile sounding environments ever? Like the other day during one of the first preseason games, there was a coach that came out, third base coach came out without a mask on and the ump said, hey, you need a mask. It was picked up by all the mics on the field. My friend Jiho Yoo, who's another great writer for the Young Hop News, he, you need a mask, it was picked up by all the mics on the field. My friend Jiho Yoo, who's another great writer for the Young Hop News, he said that in his first game, they could hear the swearing going on on the field, just simply because it is so quiet. And I think it's going to be a major adjustment, not just for the people that are watching from the outside, but also the players, because they're not sure, they're not used to everything being heard, no matter what

they're saying, whether they're talking, you know know you can put your glove over your mouth and talk you know to the catcher and stuff but then if it's so quiet you can even hear you know certain sounds coming out it's going to be very interesting to see how they they are able to adjust to this new this new way of baseball for them so the season's scheduled to start on may 5th. And is there anything that we can take from either South Korea's response to the pandemic or to the KBO's response to coming back that might be instructive as MLB looks to come back? What is it about South Korea's handling of this crisis that has allowed baseball to begin? Well, I say the country of Korea as a whole, the citizens there took the warning seriously. They stayed at home. They did their part and they felt that, you know, if we don't

want to make it worse, we're going to stay home and do our social distancing. It helped flatten the curve over there, which then resulted in baseball, you know, a luxury nowadays, sports being played because there's other professional sporting leagues over there. They're getting ready to start up as well. The Korea Baseball Organization themselves is taking it very seriously by having the players checked for temperature, sanitized. Like I just said, a coach had to have masks on when they're literally in the game for the coaches, not the players. That's not being required at this point. And they said, you know what, if the amount of cases start increasing and one of our players is, you know, test positive, we will shut down the league for at least a couple weeks to three weeks and then we'll evaluate from there.

So there was a glimmer of hope last week that American audiences were going to get to watch KBO games because we're all starved for baseball and this is a great fun league with wonderful players and then we learned that ESPN wanted to broadcast the games for free which the KBO I'm sure maybe not so politely declined to do. Have you heard anything that indicates to you that some progress might be made to get these games broadcast in the U.S. because I know that there are a lot of baseball fans here who would love to watch live baseball and learn more about this league. Sure. As a fan who's been following the league for the last 20 years, and especially now located in the United States,

it would make me so happy to see if I'd be able to turn on the TV, flick on ESPN, Fox, another major sports network, and see Korea Baseball Organization on TV. I would probably go insane because that's what I've wanted for the last 20 years. But unfortunately, the talks have broken down between ESPN and the league. It's actually not the league. Eclat is the international TV rights holder for the KBO right now.

And they did not want to give away the league for free because they said to make the satellite transmission and everything for ESPN or whatever broadcast, it was going to cost them money. So if they were to give it away for free because they said to make the satellite transmission and everything for ESPN or whatever broadcaster, it was going to cost them money. So if they were to give it away for free, they were actually going to end up losing money in that deal. So now they did say, I don't know if this is just posturing or not. They did say that there are other countries and broadcasters interested, and I've not heard any other update that was yesterday of since then. And again, I don't know if that was the league posturing or it could possibly be true because like the entire sports world

across the entire globe is shut down right now, except for the CPBL and the KBO. And I think horse racing in a couple of countries. So I know fans want to watch baseball. I want to watch it. I just hope that the league and whatever broadcast are able to come up with a great deal so that fans can watch it on TV. Currently, right now, they are being broadcast on Naver.com for free globally.

Only live games, though. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and evolution of the league and how baseball caught on in Korea? Sure. Baseball is the professional league known as the KBO, Korea Baseball Organization, started in 1982. It's a very young league compared to the majors. Since then, they've grown it. It's gone from the two new expansion teams have brought it now to a total of 10 teams. And the way that the league is over there, I'm a Phillies fan.

Obviously, the Philadelphia Phillies, the city where they're from, in the Korea Baseball Organization, they're sponsored and owned by corporations. And that's why you see in everybody that's not familiar with the league over there says the Samsung Lions, the Samsung Corporation owns it. They truly do own that team. And that is one of their ways of income and revenue and possibly tax breaks. But that is what makes it a little different than comparing it to the major leagues. But the league has been around since 1982. They've had record high TV ratings and attendance within the last three to four years. You've seen the success at the WBC as a national team. And ever since that has taken off, the league has just grown immensely in popularity. So I think that most sports fans would say that it is more fun to root for a league if you have a team, if you have a vested rooting interest. If you were advising US fans on the teams in the league and could recommend sort of one thing about each of the rosters, and you don't have to go through all of them if you don't want to, but if you could pick one thing for each team that really recommends it and gives fans a reason to say, these are my guys. What would those things be so that

our listeners can just come out of this and say, I'm a Samsung Lions fan. That's my squad. Sure. So I'll start off by the not so great, I guess the closest to the Cubs that I would say possibly right now would be the Lotte Giants. And I know the Cubs won the World Series a few years back, but they're not having great success for such a long time on the field. That would be the Lotte Giants. The Lotte Giants have not won a title since 1992. And now you have to remember that the league started out with only like six teams, then it grew to eight teams. So from 1992 to 2014, there was only eight teams in the league. Just by the probability alone, you would think you'd probably get in the playoffs and possibly win a championship, but they have not. They've just been struggling. They just hired a brand new general manager who used to work, be the Pacific Rim

scout for the Chicago Cubs. So that's why I'm also linking it. And also with their success, their not so great success over the past couple of decades on the field. Another very popular team that is very successful here, if you were looking for some bandwagon, would be the Doosan Bears. They've won the championship the last three out of four years. And the SK Wyverns, who were led to the championship two years ago by Trey Hillman. And he's since then now come back to the major leagues and become a coach. But they have been very successful on the field. And Oakland A's type of very, you know, trying to find success with a very small budget would

be the team known as the Keewoom Heroes. They are the only team in the league that is not specifically owned by a corporation. They are privately owned and they are sponsored by the Keewoom Group, but if the Keewoom Group decides to not sponsor them anymore, they will then just be known as the Seoul heroes. And they always try to get the most bang for their buck. And in fact, they've done very well on the field. And that's why they're very prone to posting players to the major leagues such as Kang Jung-ho and Park Byung-ho. Can you kind of, to calibrate the expectations of American fans who are used to MLB, give us a comparison in terms of the talent level? Is there kind of a level of American baseball that KBO is often compared to? And stylistically speaking, I know that up until fairly recently, it was known as a very high offense league, and then the ball changed. And so that changed the level of offense as well. But I know that there are fewer strikeouts, for instance, there's a bit more action maybe than there is in modern MLB. So what does KBO look like on the field?

What level are they? And that's the hardest thing to translate over, whether it's going over to Asian League baseball or even with guys coming from the Asian Leagues over to the majors or the minors. And so honestly, with a roster in South Korea, you have guys that could be on the mound, like a Hyunjin Ryu, major league, upper level quality. And on that same field could be a guy that might not even be in rookie league or low A ball here in the States. could be a guy that might not even be in rookie league or low a ball here in the states just because of the just because of the amount of players and the talent pool that they have from there's only 10 teams there's only about 70 high schools that they're pulling high school players from each each year so the talent pool is much less so then you have to make up your rosters with uh various aspects but on a good day i'd say if I had to pick a level, it's going to be AAA, minor league level. And on a bad day, you're going to see some maybe AA,

about down to AA there probably. And for the most part, with the ball being de-juiced over the last, since last season, or reportedly de-juiced, the home runs, like you said, have gone down. There's more strikeouts. It's more pitcher friendly and i don't know what's going to happen uh this coming season what the league even though they say that they don't have any any any say in how the ball comes about what they're going to do because when the home runs dropped i don't know if it just happens to be a coincidence tv ratings and attendance has fallen as well for the league and then this year with no fans coming into the ballpark to begin with, it's going to be all based on TV revenue numbers. So it's going to be interesting what they do. But like I said, it used to be a home run happy league and all of a

sudden it just dropped down last year significantly. And they also saw that at the box office and on TV. And so were there similarities in how the league responded to that dramatic sudden change? I mean, it's the opposite direction, obviously, from what's happened in MLB recently, but there was no acknowledgement that they had done this. And was there empirical data other than just the home run rate to show that there was really a difference in the ball? Well, what happened was, at least actually talking about the ball, each team, this is a couple of years ago before the league has a unified ball, each team could have their own brand ball and they had to choose between like five manufacturers.

And so then the league would have to do tests on these and see the coefficients and the balance and stuff like that. But basically what happened was the, was not coming out correctly. And that's why you saw home runs being mashed over and over. The league then says, Hey, we're going to widen up the strike zone a little bit for the pitchers. And it just, it didn't acknowledge that the ball was juiced or de-juiced. It just said that we're going to, it's going to become more of a pitcher friendly league. So there weren't as many, like last year, there weren't as many 12 to 11 ballgames. You still get that rare one, but the scoring was down in the league across the board.

You mentioned Ryu earlier. Obviously, if U.S. fans can tune in, they're going to see and be able to pay closer attention to KBO players. Are there players who U.S. fans should be aware of and maybe keep an eye on as guys who are going to look to be posted to Major League Baseball after this KBO season concludes or perhaps in the future? There is. There's a shortstop for the Kiwom Heroes who took over for Kang Jung-ho when he came over to the Pirates. This guy, Kim Ha-sung is his name. He took over at shortstop for him. He's a greatstop and his team because they are like i said very economically challenged at times they are they already came out and told him hey we will post you after this season so he is looking to have a big year so that he can put up the numbers and get get over to the major leagues um there's another guy

for the kia tigers he was actually posted in 2014 young Yang Jung-Joon, and he's a pitcher. And the team at that time rejected the bid. And so he's been with Kia. And after this year, he is looking to go. And a position player that I really like is for the NC Dinos. His last name is Na, and his first name is Sungbum. He got injured last May, and he's coming back. And they say he's 100% healthy. It was a pretty gruesome injury. I posted it once and I then saw how disgusting it was and I'm surprised that he's back so soon. But everybody's hoping that he has a big year so that he can come across because he said that he's wanted to challenge himself as well and come across to the majors if that's possible. So everybody's hoping that he is fully recovered and ready to go because the NC Dinos are going to be a very fun team to watch this year because they have

foreigners such as Mike Wright, Drew Rosinski, and Aaron out there. And those are some other guys that you could look at that aren't Korean, but possibly could eventually make it back stateside as well. Yeah, I think that's a question that Ben and I also both had, which is, you know, obviously a number of players come to the KBO from not just from the U.S., but from the major leagues sort of more generally. And I'm curious, we've seen some of those guys in the scrimmages that have gone on that have been on YouTube, but who are some of the other players who are kind of making a name for themselves in KBO right now who might be familiar to fans of major league baseball? for themselves in KBO right now who might be familiar to fans of Major League Baseball? Sure. If you're talking about some of the upcoming, the new, quote, foreign players to the league, and for the listeners that don't know, each team is allowed to sign three non-Korean players to their roster. And starting this year in 2020, a new rule that came about is all three

are able to be active in the same game. Before that, they could only choose two. So most teams would always choose two pitchers and a batter. That didn't change the way they constructed the rosters because every team this year has two foreign pitchers and one batter position player. But in the next upcoming years, it's going to be interesting to see if a team's going to be like, we need the foreign bats. But some of the players that people are excited about seeing this year in the league would be Nick Kingham. He plays for SK, prospect there for the Pirates. You had a name familiar to maybe Mets fans, Chris Flexen. He's taken over for Lindblom there at the SK Wyverns. Even when the ball was de-juiced there, he was just mashing home runs. And he just hit, I think he's hit two home runs so far in the first two or three games for them in here in the preseason.

And a guy that I'm very excited to see is Roberto Ramos. I think he's from the Rockies organization, signed by the LG Twins. LG is one of those teams that just over the last couple years could never find a slugger. They couldn't find their Eric teams. So they're hoping and praying that this guy is going to do well for them in a not a very hitter friendly ballpark there at Chompshill. They're hoping that he can get some home runs for them because LG is one of the more popular teams in the league and they have playoff

aspirations every year. But this year with Tyler Wilson, Casey Kelly, and now Ramos, I have them as being one of the top, top teams in the league. So there have been some players who've come over from the majors or high levels of American baseball and have seemingly really improved themselves as players while playing in Korea, and then have made themselves more attractive to major league teams and have come back over here. So you mentioned Eric Thames, and then of course, there's Merrill Kelly, and more recently, Josh Lindblom. So what was that? Was there a common thread in those players or in the way that players are developed in Korea that maybe some guys were

able to up their game somehow by going over there? I want to say I can't personally speak for what they personally did themselves. i did remember eric dames saying you know what he's in his apartment he doesn't have all the when you're in a foreign country you know you're not in your comfortable zone to just eventually go out do all these different things so he was basically staying home at his apartment reading up on hitting getting trying to get better as a hitter trying to find out new ways to improve himself and that's the way a lot of the guys that go over there they either will you know if they're single they they have a lot of time downtime by

themselves and if you're not into like video games or just going it's not like you can go out all the time i mean what else is there to do but work on making yourself better and then um the coaches have become a little more maybe it depends on each team and each coach. Back in the day, it'd be like, hey, we're doing it ARC KBO style way. Please do what we want to do. Now, from stories that I've heard, they're getting a little bit better and saying, whatever you've done, all right, stick to it. It's been successful.

That's always signed you. Let's see it. They may want to tweak with it, but then once they see that maybe it's not working out for them on the field, they say, all right, go back to what you were doing before. That makes me wonder. Obviously, there's an exchange of players that happens every year. And I know that some of the scouting that gets done is based on video. But I'm curious what you've heard about how the delay of baseball in the U.S. and then the travel restrictions that have been the result of this pandemic have affected scouting both of players, you know, Korean players in the KBO who might look to be posted and then also U.S. players who might be looking to make a move either because,

you know, they've kind of reached the end of their tenure in the major leagues or because they're sort of in that quad A range and would look to take advantage of playing time and professional success in the KBO. What have you heard about how the current state of affairs has sort of affected scouting? Well, that's a great point of question that you're bringing up because there's been some articles going in, at least for the foreign players in the Korea Baseball Organization right now, teams are allowed to change them twice. They can be allowed to make two changes throughout the season. And if there's no minor league baseball being played right now in the United States, there

is going to be a lot less changes is the guess because there's nobody, they're foreign scouts. They can't send them out to watch players and put them on their list of who they want to sign and possibly replace or because of injury. So the players that are there now might be there for the entire season, which is very rare. It does not happen that often. Most teams are very quick to change out some players that are not performing. On the flip side, for the rest of the league, including the foreign players themselves, being one of only two professional leagues going on right now, all eyes are on them. So I'm assuming Major League front office people and scouts are going to try to be watching the games, whether it's on Naver Live or through some other means, VPN, and look at the highlights and see what players maybe they're interested in because you have a bunch of guys that are

playing baseball right now that nobody else is. And so you have the baseball world watching you. And so I think the players do know that and they are excited. And I know some of the foreign players were excited about the thought of ESPN possibly broadcasting their games. But even if that does not happen, like I said, you can still watch games live only on Naver.com and Naver TV app. And that's how you can watch them live. But anything on demand and highlights outside of Korean IP address, it is blocked for now. And we'll see if that changes throughout the season, if there's a TV deal that gets done or what the league just says. You know what? We're done looking for international rights.

Let's just put this out free for everybody because it can help put more eyes on the league and the players themselves. How pervasive is sabermetrics and technology there these days? Has that changed much lately? Have the statistics that are used to evaluate or sign players really changed and have the games themselves changed in any way? Have some of the recent innovations and tactics in MLB like shifting or pitcher usage come to KBO? Yes, actually, it has. I've been following the league for 20 years now. And even before that, it was a very old school league. They just look at the typical, hey, home runs, RBIs, and see what we can do. And as the league has progressed, as the front office people have gotten younger, they've gotten onto sabermetrics.

They've installed TrackMan and all the up-and-coming technology that's around. They've had that at their disposal now. And I mentioned the Lotte Giants, how they hired a new GM from the Cubs. They were purposely hiring him so that he can bring in these new, quote, new ways to their team

because they were not always on the forefront of that. So he hired the GM. They hired guys like Josh Herzenberg. They've hired Kevin Long as their hitting coach, Larry Sutton. He's brought in a slew of new people to that to try to change that team around, not only just on the field, but also how they do things off the field. And so I, as a fan of just the league, am very excited to see how that plays out and see if he is given enough time there in Pusan to get their team to where he thinks it

should be. And he's basically doing what my 76ers did, trusting the process is what he's telling everybody. And so he's hoping that the fans also give him enough time to get this team turned around based on his new advanced metrics way of doing things. Yeah, between Josh and Sungmin, I think the Giants have to be the official KBO team of fan graphs. Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying. I mean, he went outside the typical KBO bubble of what they used to do and just kind of higher retreads and stuff like that. He went totally against the grain. And it's great for that team. And I'm very excited to see what those guys can do within the front office and on

the field. Yeah. So who are some of your favorite players, Korean players in the league right now that you would point to? Whether they're, you know, guys who are likely to be posted or not, just who are your favorites? Who, if you were u.s fan tuning in for the first time then you'd say hey pay attention to this guy okay well full disclosure i cheer for the doosan bear so a guy that i'm going to mention is his last name is jung his first name is subin he's a center fielder he's contactor he makes amazing plays in the outfield it's just fun every every every year there's like a super catch is is the congress for it he's always in the mix with like 10 amazing catches in the in the field he he's a guy that's not that's not coming to the united states another guy on the same team that is very interesting uh is yu he kwan he's a

pitcher he throws i think i posted a gif of him the other day. I think it was like 73 kilometer an hour, which is like 45 miles, which is very slow. He's not built for speed there, and he has had success as a pitcher for the team. And then the other guys that I mentioned before that are possibly getting posted are very fun and exciting to watch. There's a guy by the name of Kong Baek Ho. He plays for the KT Wiz. He was, everybody that had been on the outside looking in was hoping that he was going to be the KBO's version of Otani, a two-way player. He was a very good pitcher in high school, and he was actually a catcher. KT got him, and he says, I want to do both. KT said, I think we're going to put you in the field. So he's been in the outfield. Last year in spring

training, he tried to pitch, and the team was just like, no, you're still staying in the outfield. And this year, they're actually putting him over at first base to become that slugging first base for them. He's a very young player. Another young pitcher for the Keyworm Heroes would be last name Ahn and his first name Woojin. And he has very good stuff, highly touted prospect. And if he does have success, he would be a player that the Keywomb Heroes, again, looking always for ways to capitalize on some money, would probably be eager to put him up for posting. So they're also probably hoping that he has success for them, not just for team-wise, but also money-wise. I think a lot of our listeners have probably seen clips of some of the more remarkable bat flips in KBO in recent years. And I know that

Mina Kimes wrote about that for ESPN Magazine a few years ago and spoke to you for that piece. But what is it about either Korean culture or the league itself that has contributed to bat flips not really being a source of contention the way they are in the US? Are there larger cultural reasons for that? And does the acceptance of bat flips extend to other ways in which players can be demonstrative or show their personalities? Sure. When you compare the two leagues, say I'm just comparing major leagues and the KBO, it's just two different baseball cultures. There's not only just two different cultures in the country they're in, but also two different baseball cultures so whereas bat flips here in the major leagues will get yeah well over they've been trying to get that

out of the you know not getting knocked down as much as it's trying to you know get that out of the game and being placed as much you know they're trying to hey hey let the kids play they're trying to do that but um in kbo a bat flip whether it's a home run or even a pop fly out to shallow left the guys will flip their bat. It's just their style, the way they do things, and that's not offensive to the pitchers over there. But some things that are offensive to players here in the United States would not be offensive in Korea. But vice versa, if you hit a batter and you don't tip your cap, that's a huge no-no. Benches have cleared because of that, especially because a big, that's a huge no-no. Benches have

cleared because of that, especially because with age and hierarchy of the way that it goes, if you don't tip your cap, it's on. The benches are clearing. But here, you know, you peg a guy, whether it's accidental or not, nobody makes a big deal out of it. But it's just the different baseball cultures, the different baseball unwritten rules that happen on each country and each league. And so bat flips are something that I think they got on in the United States because they weren't as joyous and they don't happen as much here in the major leagues or they didn't when everybody's looking at the KBO. And now slowly it seems that they're starting to accept them

and even market them themselves as a league because like major league baseball cut for they're putting out you know flips and all this and saying hey check out the best flips from this past season and stuff like that whereas 10 years ago you would have never seen that and so i don't know if that culture from the kbo has has carried over or it's just like you know what let's loosen up a little bit let's have some fun yeah seems like basic courtesy to tip your cat if you're gonna to drill a guy with a pitch. bad about it and maybe if it's a particularly bad one they will walk over and express some sort of concern or at least perform that they feel a little bit bad about what they did but sure yeah i think i mean they will for one tip their cap and then bow as well and there's a couple i have

i've seen a couple videos or just seen a couple games where guys are like they're literally on the bench they're going tip your cap tip your cap tip your cap and they're literally on the bench to going tip your cap, tip your cap, tip your cap. And they're getting ready to like they're getting ready to get onto the field because the guy is not tipping his cap. And it's just like that wouldn't be such a huge deal here in the major leagues, whereas there it's very big. That is something whereas a bat flip on a pot fly is not going to like cause benches to empty. Well, if we were doing a preseason preview pod for a particular team, we would ask you and force you to predict a record. We won't make you do that for every team in KBO, but we will ask you, who do you think emerges victorious this season? Who is the league champion? It's all said and done. You're putting me on the spot because I

haven't come up with my season preview. I was supposed to be doing it this weekend. But I'm going to go with the Keewan Heroes. Like I said, they are the Oakland A's of very financially strapped teams sometimes. But the way that they have done things over the years, they've just been successful. Last year, they went 86-57 finish second to the Doosan Bears in the regular season. They just have a great young core of players. Like I said, Anuj in their pitcher, Kim Ha-Sung possibly being posted. Plus their pitchers of Eric Jokic and Jake Brigham are very good pitchers, solid pitchers, and that plays out and they get a good ballpen. That goes very far in the KBO. The ballpens are going to be really, really key this

season because they're trying to put 144 games in a condensed schedule. So I've seen coaches talk about it. They're worried. They're worried for their arms. So they don't know how it's going to play out towards, say, the middle of the summer, towards the fall. Guys might be gassed just because they're not used to playing so many games in a row if they have to start playing on Mondays. Yeah, Monday's an off day for the league, for the people that don't know. So if they start having to play on Mondays to make up some games, these guys aren't going to get a rest

and you're going to see ballpens and arms just being gassed. And so home runs might start actually increasing because of that as well. So are there any other resources other than the ways you've mentioned of watching it? And of course, your site, mykpo.net and your Twitter account, mykpo. Any other resources for American fans who are interested in following the league or getting more into it? a TV deal done. That's what I was told. They will make the games live, but highlights and games on demand will not be. But then some other great Twitter follows on Twitter would be Jiho Yu.

He is a Yonhap News reporter, probably the only English reporter doing a lot of KBO stuff over there in the English language. Another one would be Daniel Kim. He's a broadcaster, does his stuff in Korean, but he also throws out some English news, breaking news as well. There is, as you know, Sungmin Kim, he now works for the Lotte giant. So he's not going to be doing, he's going to do very, a lot of Lotte news, I'm assuming if he does put out any news. And then there's a Korea baseball history. If you want to learn more about the history, not just of the KBO, but of how Korea came to baseball or how baseball came to Korea, how the KBO was actually formed. My friend Patrick runs Korea Baseball History, and I will probably put it up again as a retweet. I have all these names down there that I suggest

fans to go out there and follow them so you can learn more about Korean baseball in the English language. All right. Are there any other trends or storylines that we haven't touched on? I'm always thinking of what the KBO equivalent would be of in MLB. We're always talking about the ball. Well, we've talked about the ball, but tanking or pace of play or all these things that we're constantly fretting about, is there anything like that that is occupying Korean fans? Not right now. So that pace of play, I always chuckle when I saw it here in majors, they're talking about the pitch clocks and stuff like that. KBO is actually a little bit ahead. They actually had the pitch clocks. They actually

had the pace of play. They actually had the keep your foot in the batter's box or when a guy got walked, please don't literally walk down, please hustle. So when they started that out in the spring training a few years ago, literally people were like, ball four, sprint into first base. They're just trying to get the pace of play up. There's no talk of robot umpires coming up, although some players probably wish there was because KBO umps can be very, very different than major league umps. In fact, I talked about Ramos for LG. I saw his first at bat in a preseason game yesterday, and he got three pitches.

bat in a preseason game yesterday and he got three pitches kingham placed him very nicely but i probably wouldn't call i wanted to call them all strikes and he just looked back at the ump just shook his head it's preseason right so he's just like uh what i think i could just imagine what he's thinking going it's gonna be a long year i got some adjustments to make because the kbo umps uh strike zone can be very different each game. All right. Well, it has been a long year already for all of us, but hopefully KBO will help out a little bit when it comes back on May 5th. And of course, you can follow Dan on Twitter at myKBO and at his site, myKBO.net, if you want to be up on the latest in the league. Thanks very much, Dan. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

That will do it for today. I will, as always, link to everything that we referenced in this episode, all the resources for these leagues. If you're interested in looking them up, check out the show page or the summary in your podcast app or the Facebook group. You can also support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have

already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going while getting themselves access to some perks. Ryan, Cody F. Schmidt, Dirk Keaton, Aaron Schaefer, and Matt Muzia. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for me and meg and sam coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance as always if you're looking for some reading material may i recommend my book the mvp machine how Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data

to Build Better Players. It's out now in paperback with a new afterword that is also now included in the digital edition of the book. So go check it out if you have some time to read. We hope you have a good weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. 지금 이 함성과 함께 울려 퍼지는 사랑 속 그저 그저 하늘에 문을 닫힌 그리움 지금 이 함성과 함께