St. Louis Cardinals new Korean lefty is fluent in the language of baseball
No single player in St. Louis Cardinals camp this spring is the subject of more intense fan interest than lefthander Kwang-hyun Kim.
It’s likely that most fans in St. Louis are yet to see him throw even one pitch; indeed, some are still trying to work through the pronunciation of his name (kwong yunn, though he prefers “KK”). Fans in Korea, though, have a surpassing interest in his fortunes, and his first appearance in an American game on Saturday at Roger Dean Stadium came with rave reviews.
Through Wednesday, it’s been Kim’s only spring game action.
“First time on the mound today, but I was kind of nervous,” Kim said through his translator, Craig Choi. “But the results were good, so I was happy.”
“I thought KK was good,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said. “Good slider, located his fastball, showed a little changeup. Was a nice outing for him.”
Spring training results have an odd habit of only seeming to matter when they’re positive, so it would be fitting to chalk Saturday up in Kim’s column. He struck out two of the four batters he faced in his one inning pitched, working around a walk which saw the demonstrative Kim appear to express frustration at his location — or perhaps the umpiring.
It was an unusual sign of frustration in the fifth inning of the first spring training game of the year, but it speaks in part to what makes all things Kim exciting for Korean audiences and, potentially, to those in St. Louis as well.
One Korean reporter following Kim in Florida compared the lefty’s cultural impact in his home country to that of Lebron James in the United States. Though Toronto’s Hyun-jin Ryu is considered the superior pitcher, Kim draws an immense following through his willingness to show a personal side that’s less commonly displayed by athletes and celebrities in a more traditional cultural context.
Kim happily worked with a reporter on Saturday to come up with a Korean phrase to describe Tyler O’Neill’s mammoth second inning home run. He greets American media and complex staff in English each morning and sits with his teammates at breakfast, working to catch up on the parts of his new cultural immersion that may be less universal than the language of baseball.
Baseball, though, helps a lot. Some of the same rules get broken, no matter the language barrier.
Shildt said Saturday morning that the club was planning to be intentional about avoiding radar gun readings for its pitchers in the Grapefruit League opener. This early in camp, Shildt explained, it doesn’t serve pitchers well to pitch themselves too hard and chase numbers on the scoreboard.
Starter Jack Flaherty and reliever Brett Cecil both admitted to violating that directive and sneaking the stray glance at the centerfield speed readout. And Kim? Checking up is second nature.
“Normally it’s a habit for me to look at the velocity of my pitch. But today I tried not to as often as my habit is,” Kim said. “But mostly I do watch my velocity for every pitch.”
The media is much less bound by the manager’s directives, and with MLB’s Statcast system operational in the Jupiter ballpark, there was an opportunity to check up on Kim’s progress in real time.
His fastball topped out at 92.1 miles per hour, but generally sat around 90 MPH. He showed a sharp slider in the low 80s and a curveball measured just over 70; a mix, in short, that should play in longer outings.
“Pitching’s a disruption of timing and you have multiple weapons you can do it with from different angles, as far as the pitch shapes,” Shildt said. “He’s got, it looks like, three or four good pitches and he knows what he’s doing with them.”
“I’ve been throwing my slider since my childhood,” Kim explained. “The MLB official ball is a little bigger compared to the KBO ball. Still, I’m adjusting to that. It’s fun.”
The Cardinals’ pursuit of Kim this winter was not a passing fancy. The Athletic reported last week that, for a decade, Cardinals special assistant to the general manager Matt Slater, who coordinates the team’s Asian scouting, has been tracking Kim’s progress and waiting for the right time for the club to complete its pursuit.
With a need for rotation depth, that time arrived this winter. And with Miles Mikolas missing the start of the season with a flexor tendon strain, Kim is a strong candidate to begin the season in the starting rotation.
That distinction is meaningful for the Korean reporters who have tracked Kim through camp. Both Cardinals staff members and members of the American media have been asked consistently about the state of the rotation competition, the progress of Kim’s main competitors for innings, and about the likely timing of Shildt’s decision to set the roster.
For Kim, the focus has been on adjusting to a new environment while making the best possible case for his abilities. To date, the acquittal has been strong.
“Our pitchers are really strong,” Kim said. “And our hitters — (O’Neill) who hit the home run. And then the defense, it’s just clear. Really good. Sound. With that, that’s how I know St. Louis is a strong team.”
