Korea’s Doosan Bears have agreed to sign former MLB outfielder Scott Van Slyke, per a team announcement (Korean link; h/t Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net, on Twitter). He’ll earn a $320K salary.
Van Slyke, 31, had a six-year run in the majors with the Dodgers. But his opportunities and productivity trailed off over the course of that span. All told, he carries a .242/.326/.417 slash line with 29 home runs in 869 MLB plate appearances.
Heading into the present season, Van Slyke joined the Marlins on a minors pact. It seemed he’d have a solid shot at breaking back into the majors at some point, but that hasn’t yet come to pass. He has, however, hit well at Triple-A, producing a .248/.354/.467 batting line and swatting eight long balls in 162 trips to the plate.
In that most recent work, Van Slyke has produced well against right-handed pitching at the highest level of the minors. During his time in the bigs, though, he carried yawning platoon splits, with a .146 point spread between his career OPS marks against lefties and righties.
Welocome to KBO, Scott
Will miss him in NOLA. Had developed into a real fan favorite with the Baby Cakes.
Don’t dog it over there, Scott!
it is interesting that both he and tony gwynn jr were on the dodgers at the same time and neither of the 2 managed to really break out despite their pedigree. Dee gordon on the other hand was able to.
Well…Dee didn’t really break out until he was in MIA
Well that’s a silly comment. He was an all star 2B for the Dodgers in 2014.
Dee didn’t really breakout until he started juicing…
I feel like Scott is the kind of MLB player that never truly got a shot in his prime. He was always in a crowded OF situation with the Dodgers.
R.I.P Stache Van Smash 2013-2014
Stay healthy and may be another shot in the Majors
I love how this site will call a .248 batting average as producing well but then other times they they will call it a down season .
Agreed, the consistency in their representation of the stat line has seemed off a bit more this year than other years. I understand that different writers have different assessments of productivity but this site seems to have a wider variation than most. Perhaps its time for them to have a conference call meeting and get everybody on the same page. Although we are all baseball fans and we have our own interpretation on the stat lines as well. I don’t know about you but my opinion of a players production does not change on the opinion of a writer that says it is good or bad.
I think they normally base it off of the triple slash line as he got on base at a decent clip for his average and his slugging % was decent as well
If you are looking first and foremost at batting average, perhaps you’ll see inconsistency in how we characterize the usefulness of a given slash line. That’s because we recognize that batting average is easily the least important of the triple-slash numbers. A mid-.300s OBP with good pop is productive, even if you have a marginal batting average.
I was going to comment and say this same thing but you beat me to it!
Understood. Great the batter has pop/get on base. For me, The batting average is still a great importance as it shows how often the batter actually get on base with balls in play.
According to your line…it the least important…well if that’s the case then Ryan Howard, Carlos Pena, Adam Dunns, soon to be Jason Gallo, ect. should have never phased out since they had good pop.Right?
×joey
.248 average is nothing to be proud of, especially in AAA ball. This game has changed for the worse when it’s thought of as hitting well. I say keep shifting until players learn to control their bats. Imagine a team today shifting on Rod Carew. it would change with every at bat.