After some late-spring drama, Korean outfielder Hyun Soo Kim will be on the Orioles Opening Day roster, reports Dan Connolly of BaltimoreBaseball.com. Baltimore signed Kim to a two-year, $7MM contract over the offseason. The deal included a provision that allowed Kim to refuse an assignment to the minors.
After hitting just .178/.224/.178 in 45 spring plate appearances, the Orioles reportedly believed it was best for Kim’s development to start the year in the minors. Kim’s Korea-based agency announced earlier last week that he would not accept an assignment to the minor. Per executive VP Dan Duquette, “we asked for his consent because we thought that was the best way to prepare him. He needed more time in the transition and, so, he didn’t see it that way.”
The team actually has need of a left-handed hitting backup outfielder so Kim can still fill a valuable role. It’s important to remember that a bad March does not necessarily portend an equally rough season – especially for an overseas player who may be experiencing culture shock. Kim is coming off a strong season in the KBO – .326/.438/.541 with 28 home runs and 38 more walks than strikeouts.
For his part, Kim is grateful for the opportunity, writes Rich Dubroff of CSN Mid-Atlantic. Speakings through a translator, he said “I’m very happy to be on the roster and I will try my best to make it up to the coaching staff and organization.”
Is there a corresponding move? I know they had that rule 5 pick who was supposed to make the roster instead. Is he gone?
Nope, Joey Rickard will be the opening day LFer. The one who got optioned to minors to make room for Kim was Xavier Avery.
Here’s the complete 25-man roster:
Pitchers
Chris Tillman
Yovani Gallardo
Ubaldo Jimenez
Mike Wright
Zach Britton
Darren O’Day
Brad Brach
Mychal Givens
Dylan Bundy
T.J. McFarland
Tyler Wilson
Vance Worley
Catchers
Matt Wieters
Caleb Joseph
Infielders
Chris Davis
Jonathan Schoop
J.J. Hardy
Manny Machado
Pedro Alvarez
Ryan Flaherty
Outfielders
Adam Jones
Mark Trumbo
Joey Rickard
Nolan Reimold
Hyun Soo Kim
I don’t see Gausman on your list. Did he not make the final cut or is he injured again?
He’s gonna start the year on DL
How the Orioles front office continually heat themselves wrapped around their axles blows my mind. This entire conversation should have been held and addressed ‘behind clubhouse doors’ … Not in the public domain..
This is now (2) blatantly ugly (i.e. Non professional) scenarios in 6 weeks (Dexter fowler is the other).
Will be interesting to see how future IFA’s (who truly have a choice on who to sign with) assess ‘signing with baltimore’ vs ‘signing with others’ …
(Sp) ‘…get themselves wrapped…’
Don’t forget the David negotiations too.
O’s brass are definitely way to chummy with the local media. That’s were a lot of this is coming from. I guess they feel they owe the local beat reporters something for being so easy on them over the years.
Good points guys… In a way, I can understand this to some degree, but you can still give local media the ‘scoop’ once you get past the trust threshold with the player (“… hey kim, it’s important for the ball clubs media relations that we share some of the tough decisions we have to make when we cut down from 27-28 to 25. We would like to share how together ‘we’ came up with a plan to close some of the gaps (cultural and mechanical) and help with the challenges you had this spring).
Hey we are all adults (and DD and his staff are the professionals)… The O’s have been successful attaching talent in spite of some odd public perspectives (which I am sure we only know part of the story). I am sure there is a lot of really positive stuff between front office and player that never makes the news ..
Good luck this year in the east. In the end, I am betting 5-8 games separate the O’s, Yankees, Rays and Red Sox
Kang had similar stats for Pitt last Spring
and was good by May 1 – this guy still could be OK
Kang went 9 for 45, but 5 of those hits were for extra bases, 2 of them homeruns. All of Kim’s hits were singles. Also, Kim didn’t exhibit the patience at the plate he was known for in Korea, as he walked only 1 time this spring. Kang on the other hand walked 4 times. There was a lot more reason to be optimistic about Kang than there is about Kim.
He really did swing at almost everything that was offered up. The only real bright spot I saw is that he didn’t strike out much. But about half his hits were infield squibblers.
His hits were squibbed because Kim’s swing is #awful
No Soup For Yu, gimme a break. You’re reaching. I guarantee you no one at this point last year looked at Kang’s stats and said “yeah, he’s only got 9 hits, but hey 5 of those were for extra bases and holy 2 were home runs! There’s some promise there, boys!” People were just as down on Kang then as they are now of Kim, maybe even more so. I was there. Know-it-alls like you were condemning the Pittsburgh front office for being so clueless about Kang after all of 45 ABs.
My suggestion: wait to see how it plays out. Neither you nor I have a functioning crystal ball. If Kim is still struggling in 2-3 months, then I’ll be the second in line baying for blood. Until then, stow your conceited prejudices and be silent about things you know little about please.
You clearly don’t understand how baseball scouting works. The extra-base hits do matter…it shows an ability to square up and impact major league pitching (something that Kim completely failed to do this spring).
When your response to someone is “you’re a know-it-all” and “I was there” you’re just wrong. It’s OK.
Also, telling people to “be quiet about things they know nothing about” is hilarious after you just got done pretending to know everything about the situation and wrongly inferred that the quality of hits don’t matter when scouting a player. Maybe it’s you who should be quiet…
The conversation about Kim is so silly. I have literally seen people say the Orioles “owe it to him” to put him on the roster.
…why??? They took a $7 million chance on him and if they don’t think he is one of their best 25 players, why would they put him on the roster?
I hope they just leave him on the bench until he gets bored and asks to be sent down.
I still don’t understand the big deal. He was asked to go to AAA because the O’s thought that’s the best place where he could acclimate. He said no, which was his contractual right, and the O’s kept him on the roster.
Now, he will see a minimum number of at-bats, and likely have a difficult time finding his groove due to sporadic playing time because there are better options for Buck to start. In turn, it will be even harder for him to achieve success at the major league level. This is especially true because he isn’t great defensively or fast, so he will rarely, if ever, be used as a defensive replacement or pinch runner. Obviously, he shouldn’t do any pinch hitting at this point either.
He would have been better off accepting the a demotion, getting accustomed to play here in the states, and coming up to the big squad in a month or two after he has found his stroke and earned consistent playing time.
Exactly.
Heck NO! No player in their right mind that had a clause not to be sent down, would go down. He’s not getting paid by AB’s, he’s getting paid for 2yr contract. Why would he go from the Penthouse living to the condo living? He negotiated that right
…regardless of whether or not he is in majors he gets paid in full.
Yeah – he gets the cash either way. The ABs are important because actually having them is what will give him the opportunity to improve on an awful spring.
Keeping the money doesn’t alter the fact that life in the Major Leagues and life in the minor leagues are very, very different things.
Maybe, but he did have a deal. I wonder if better communication might have left the two sides with some sort of “a bit of soreness in his quads, so he’s going to stay in extended Spring Training…” nonsense that would have saved face. The O’s now look foolish for having made the deal, and a player they were going to use, partially for esthetics as well as performance, had his reputation dinged.
Agreed!
Why do you sign a complete unknown to a contract that doesn’t let you send him to the minors in the first place?
Most likely it was what made him sign with the O’s. He probably had a similar deal money wise from someone else.
I wonder that myself.
The Dodgers did this with Alex Guerrero, a guy who clearly can’t play major league baseball. This was before the Friedman era, but it’s still puzzling how a team could possibly offer this kind of contract.
The Dodgers did this with Alex Guerrero, who has turned out to be one of the most useless players in baseball. I’m guessing teams will start to refuse these deals in the future.
For the same reason teams give players opt-out clauses. Stupid.
The Orioles are a mess. Someone in the FO or the Orioles coaching staff is leaking information (Fowler, Kim). In the Kim case, its obvious Duquette and Showalter are not in agreement and Buck is not going along with his decisions (this should have been resolved quietly). Also, last trade deadline when Duquette said the team needed pitching Buck then said the pitching was fine and they needed another bat. They needed both but obviously Buck and Duquette disagreed what was a priority.
One ship one captain. Sounds like this boat has a problem
I fail to see how the Fowler thing was the Orioles’ fault. Fowler messaged Adam Jones that he was looking forward to playing in Baltimore, then changed his mind. Fowler’s agent accused the team and the media of leaking information to cover his own backside, because 95% of all leaked negotiation information comes from the offices of player agents.
This Kim thing is all on the O’s, however. They should have never made any public pronouncement of Kim not making the team without finding out ahead of time if he would willingly go to Norfolk. Whether or not the contract clause was stupid (and it was) is irrelevant. I’m actually not looking forward to his introduction on Opening Day. I would hate to hear him get booed when all he did was exercise a contractual right the team gave him and become a victim of the team botching this whole situation from a public relations standpoint.
It’s not the local media that is getting this info, it’s Roch Kubatko. He’s a great guy and reporter but his employer is the Orioles.
They are using him to leak certain information in hopes to guage public intrest and use public opinion to help influence their agenda. So in the end, these leaks are intentional and I don’t necessarily feel the Kim leak is that bad. IMO it makes Kim look selfish. He could have modified his contract so that given a date (like May 15) if not on the MLB roster, he becomes a free agent and walks with his 7 million.
He himself can’t be proud of his performance thus far. Pride can be a dangerous thing.