KBO’s NC Dinos Sign Eric Jokisch, Release Daniel Castano

The NC Dinos of the Korea Baseball Organization announced yesterday that they’ve signed left-hander Eric Jokisch to a $100K deal for the rest of the season. The news was relayed (on X) by Dan Kurtz of MyKBO, who tweeted earlier this week that the Dinos were waiving southpaw Daniel Castano to facilitate a deal for another foreign player.

KBO teams can have a maximum of two non-Korean pitchers on their roster. The Dinos signed former Red Sox left-hander Kyle Hart over the offseason. He’s having a very nice season, working to a 2.47 ERA through 124 innings. Castano had a more pedestrian 4.35 mark in 111 2/3 frames. He struck out 18.7% of opponents against a tidy 5.3% walk percentage.

Castano is a former 19th round pick by the Cardinals who went to the Marlins in the Marcell Ozuna/Sandy Alcantara/Zac Gallen trade. He’d go on to make 24 appearances over parts of four seasons in Miami, working mostly as a depth starter. Castano turned in a 4.47 ERA in 88 2/3 big league innings. He made the jump to Korea last offseason, not long after being waived by Miami in September.

Jokisch is also a former big leaguer, though he’s been far more established in Korea. His major league work consists of four appearances for the Cubs a decade ago. The Northwestern product subsequently kicked off a very successful KBO run in which he turned in a 2.85 earned run average over five seasons as a member of the Kiwoom Heroes. His tenure with the Heroes came to an unfortunate end last summer when he suffered a muscle tear in his leg that led the team to release him. (Injured players would still count against a KBO team’s foreign player limit.) The 35-year-old gets a new opportunity to resume his career.

In one other bit of KBO news — or more accurately, lack thereof — reporter Daniel Kim tweets that July 31 was the Korean league’s trade deadline. There were zero trades made.