The Kiwoom Heroes of the Korea Baseball Organization have re-signed lefty Eric Jokisch, per Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News. The 32-year-old will make $1.3MM.
The southpaw has 14 1/3 innings of MLB experience, which came with the Cubs back in 2014. He had an ERA of 1.88 in that stint, but then bounced around the minors for the next four years without being given another shot at the big league level. He signed with the Heroes prior to the 2019 season and recently completed his third straight excellent campaign.
In 2019, he made 30 starts, throwing 180 1/3 innings with an ERA of 3.13. In 2020, in 159 2/3 innings over 27 starts, his ERA dropped all the way down to 2.14. His 18% strikeout rate was a bit low, but he succeeded largely because of his incredible groundball rate of 71.9%. After that excellent season, it was rumored that he was considering a return to MLB. However, he ended up re-signing with the Heroes.
In 2021, he made 31 more starts, logging 181 1/3 innings with an ERA of 2.93. Once again, his meager strikeout rate of 17.7% was offset by an incredible groundball rate, this time reaching an amazing 75.9%. As noted by Yoo, over the past three years, Jokisch leads the KBO in ERA and is third in both wins and innings. He’ll now look to build on that tremendous three-year run by suiting up for the Heroes for a fourth season.
Is anyone else preparing to wake up in the middle of the night or early morning to watch KBO again? I kinda liked the foul ball whistles.
I do that already, just use the Naver app to get games while drinking my coffee. Listening to the Korean announcers get super excited is great!
It’s unreal the comments this type of transaction gets. Please, come out of the basement and get some air.
I was expecting him to get $1-1.1 million because Kiwoom tends to be cheap when trying to bring foreign players back for future seasons.
Where can i find KBO stats in English ???
BBREf usually has them
A 10-second Google search is all it took me.
Even though it’s a miniscule sample size, you’d still think he would have gotten an extended look with a team after that performance with the Cubs.
Teams nowadays don’t fall for small sample size results.
I was expecting some Jokisch jokes.
Or would that be HBO instead of KBO and kaboom instead of Kiwoom?
But with a 75.9 percent ground-ball rate, he’s a jukebox hero.
Hats off to the mlbtraderumors folks for trying to find interesting things to write… but Korean Baseball signings is kinda a little short. And this is coming from someone who lived there for years and has attended maybe 10-20 of their games.(I loved banging my hit-sticks together watching the pretty cheerleaders dance as I chowed down on dried squid, which is a lot tastier than you might think!)
Now, some historical perspective like “the best North American players ever to play in Korea” might be kind of cool..
Why is this even news? Lol
He’s been making bank across the world while you live check to check, cry about it.
He may not get a chance at the major leagues because it is very trendy to have a high strikeout rate right now. A guy like Greg Maddux, would he even happen in today’s game?
Did you watch Maddox pitch? Yes, he would happen in today’s game. We’re talking about an all-timer.
@Roy. You are correct. 3 to 1 walk to strikeout rate. Greg Maddux had 740 games started with 109 complete games of which 35 were shutouts. He threw right around 200 innings and usually more from 1988-2008. 5000 innings pitched! Teams would be drooling all over themselves to have them as their top of rotation pitcher and most likely their ace. He would be a 30-40 million a year pitcher in today’s MLB market.
We can be (Kiwoom) Heroes, just for one day.
It’s news because we love baseball. KBO is equivalent to AA talent, which in my opinion has more talent than AAA, but that’s here in the states. Jokisch is 32 and getting paid 1.1 to dominate their league. Sweet gig. Would be bus riding to a shifty hotel otherwise for a lot less
@Ron Tingley
Hyun Jin Ryu is pretty good for “AA” level, so is Kwang Hyun Kim.
The KBO is way above “AA” level.
Plenty of MLB players have failed in the KBO, so maybe they have to go back to A ball to get to the level.
yeah, that comp has never made any sense in my mind.
Just going off what a Baseball Amererica writer wrote.. and Ryu is a diamond in the rough, there has to be at least one! Both Kim and Ryu went into the KBO at 18 and flat dominanted. Kim is already 32 and might not be around for to much longer.. How many players are in that league that have come over to put together a successful run of more than a few years in the mlb? Wasn’t there a closer named Kim that blew up for the Diamondback in the WS in the early 2000’s. I remember he was lights out in his first 1 1/2 seasons then was figured out and never the same.
Overall, here is the hierarchy of how MLB front office officials and evaluators generally view the quality of the various Asian leagues compared to MLB and the minor leagues.
This is what BA Says
MLB
NPB (Japan)
AAA
KBO (Korea)
AA
High A
CPBL (Taiwan)
Low A
There was some variance in the responses. Some evaluators felt the KBO was equivalent to Double-A rather than above it. Some felt the CPBL was equivalent to high Class A rather than below it.
kinda hard to have such a run if you dont come over until your late 20s or early 30s.
But most MLB all-stars played in AA. Ryu and Kim are elite compared to AA generally, but the same is true for Tatis, Soto, Acuna, Guerrero, etc.
But yes, KBO has a lot of talent. I have not a deep dive to look at the quality of their bench players compared to those in AA. But I think it is slightly insulting to call another country’s top players comparable to AA.
Would we like it if Brazil called U.S. Men’s soccer equivalent to a high school team?
Whats more insulting is you think a bunch of dudes in their late 20’s and early thirties are more talented than the top AA players who are teens and early 20’s. The best MLB talent will make the straight jump from AA to the show. If they do season in AAA it’s not the 14 years in the KBO the your example of Kim having. Lol come on, in all the years of KBO baseball the talent of pitchers produced from that league are minimal. The ones with success have been great ones. And dude speaking of insults, you just called the USA soccer team a bunch of high schoolers compared to Brazil. What a joke, more credit need needed. Maybe college kids..