The LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization have made a pair of moves involving former major leaguers, Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net reports. The club signed outfielder Carlos Peguero and placed first baseman Tommy Joseph on waivers.
Playing in Asia isn’t foreign to the 32-year-old Peguero, though he is new to Korean ball. Peguero spent 2016-18 with the Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. Before that, he played parts of 2011-15 in the majors and struggled to a .194/.263/.384 line in a combined 319 plate appearances with the Mariners, Royals, Red Sox and Rangers.
Joseph’s also an ex-Ranger, having joined the team via waivers from the Phillies going into the 2018 season. Joseph ended up spending the entire season in the minors, though, which was unexpected after he was a regular for the Phillies over the previous two years. The right-handed slugger accumulated 880 trips to the plate during those seasons and piled up 43 home runs, but his overall production (.247/.297/.460 – good for a 97 wRC+) didn’t convince the Phillies to retain him, nor did it lead to a chance in Texas.
Unable to find another big league opportunity last offseason, the 27-year-old Joseph signed in Korea for $1MM. While Joseph looked like a candidate to rake in the hitter-friendly KBO, his OPS (.758) over 217 PA has fallen more than 100 points short of the league average (.866) for foreign players.
Think bigger names then this guy Twinkies.
That’s strange as Baseball Reference shows the league (KBO) OPS at .728 and he was fourth on his team…though it being the worst hitting team in the league. Though Peguero is coming from the Mexican League, which does have an OPS of .855, where his OPS is .012 below average.
Well researched as always…
He hasn’t played in a bit so I’m guessing injury. To add another foreign player I think they had to get rid of Joseph. They can only have 3 foreign players. I doubt it’s just due to production since they signed him for the max new foreign player salary at $1M.
My mistake. I was looking at the league-average OPS for foreign players in the KBO.
Tommy Jo was the original Joey Gallo!
Joey Gallo is an all-star who hits 40+ bombs and can throw 94mph+ from the outfield. They are not similar players at all haha
Cmon Marlins! Id love to see him back on the Majors again.
The real reason his slugging percentage was lacking was the fact that he only had three doubles compared to his normal pace which would have given him about 10 doubles and it likely would have let Joseph keep his roster spot since his slugging percentage would have been .462 if you replaced seven singles with doubles.
You can say that about anyone!