The Korea Baseball Organization’s Nexen Heroes have announced that they have signed former MLB outfielder Jerry Sands (h/t Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net, on Twitter). He’ll take the roster spot of fellow outfielder Michael Choice, another prior big leaguer, who was released.
Sands, 30, has seen action in five MLB seasons, producing a composite .238/.303/.367 batting line. He had spent the past two seasons with the Giants organization. In 371 plate appearances at the Double-A and Triple-A levels in 2018, Sands carries a .269/.361/.505 slash with 16 long balls.
As for Choice, a 28-year-old former first-round draft pick, he has struggled through three hundred career MLB plate appearances (.188/.253/.320) but turned in a big 2017 effort after moving to Nexen last year. Unfortunately, he hasn’t matched that productivity thus far in the present season, as he’s carrying a .258/.339/.458 batting line with 17 home runs.
Choice’s stat line may look fairly robust at first glance, but it’s not all that impressive for the notoriously hitter-friendly KBO. The standards are especially high for foreign players, as each team is capped at three apiece. There are quite a few significant performers listed on MyKBO’s foreign-player leaderboard. As Kurtz notes, today’s transaction occurs just before the mid-August deadline for KBO players to add foreign players to their roster who are eligible for postseason play.
He wasn’t a first rounder
Choice was a first rounder
they really didn’t have much of a Choice, honestly.
Does anyone else remember that week or two a few years ago that Jerry Sands just raked for the Indians? That was fun and I’m not even being sarcastic either
I do remember that. For a couple of weeks he was dynamic for Cleveland, but then… not so much.
I remember.
Could start a new wing of the site…KBOTR
Jerry Sands was a beast when he was in the minor league system with the Dodgers. It’s a shame he couldn’t put it all together in the majors. I’ll never forget his first few games in LA when during every AB he would get the Jerry Springer “Jeeerrryyyy” chant.
We should also never forget to remember, “He – sop – choi!” That chant also lasted for a week or two.
Sands will forever be a footnote in the trade that brought Adrian Gonzales to LA.
He had like 3 seasons were he hit 25+ homers and 100+ RBIs and it seemed he was going to be a solid everyday outfielder or at the very least a 4th outfielder.
The thing I most associate with Sands is his awful 2013 season with the Pirates’ AAA team. Sands got traded twice in one offseason, from LA to Boston to Pittsburgh, as a highly valued part of 2 big trades, and then had one of the worst seasons you will ever see out of a prospect (.207/.311/.329). He has had good to great numbers in AAA every year before or since that time.. Not only was he bad on the field that year, I recall that he got a multi-game suspension for going into the stands after a heckler (Felix Pie was also involved, speaking of guys who never quite made it, but I forget any other details).
I remember when trading for Choice was a big move for the Rangers. Just goes to show ya not to overvalue prospects