Please Come and Watch
Exhibition records don't mean much. Even so, as the last chance to see how thoroughly a club had prepared through the winter, it wasn't a stretch of the calendar anyone could simply shrug off.
So you're reading the shape of this season as two contenders, five clubs in the middle, and three at the bottom?
That's my personal view, yes. Last year's champions, the Thunders, and the runners-up, Duonex, kept the cores that already made them formidable — and by replacing the foreign players who had left them wanting, both clubs got another layer stronger.
The five Park Joo-hwan placed in the middle were the Incheon Rangers, the Seoul Braves, the Daegu Skies, the Changwon Dragons, and the Seoul Mounties.
The Braves finished seventh last year and the Dragons eighth, but depending on how they carry the early season, I think both are more than capable of threatening the top of the league.
As you say, plenty of fans already know the Braves and the Dragons spent this hot stove on major additions and got meaningfully stronger. Alkonen with the Braves and Edwin with the Dragons were both still throwing in the major leagues as recently as last year, weren't they?
They were. And the exhibitions showed it — the pitching from both of them was outstanding. Once the league opens, everything hinges on how quickly domestic hitters can break those two down and find a way to attack them.
Every club's advance-scouting staff is so sharp these days that I don't imagine it'll take very long. Next, could you walk us through the three teams at the bottom?
For this season's bottom three, Park Joo-hwan named the Suwon Techs, the Busan Titans, and the Daejeon Phoenix.
The Suwon Techs finished fourth last year, with enough talent to reach the playoffs. But the talent that walked out the door this winter was fatal. I don't see how you grade them any other way.
Exactly. They failed to re-sign the foreign starters who won fourteen and twelve games last year. Jo Woo-hyun, who anchored the heart of the order, left for the major leagues, and Byeon Min-woo signed a free-agent deal with the Braves and left as well. On paper, the roster had no choice but to fall off.
And the other two — the Titans and the Phoenix? What do you make of them?
The Titans patched holes from outside, but it's hard to expect anything substantial from those additions. Honestly, if the Titans simply develop the prospects they already have in-house, the roster could rise a great deal on its own…
Perhaps because the Titans were a club he himself had once played for, Commentator Park went on about them at considerable length.
Lastly, let's talk about the Daejeon Phoenix. I'll be honest — if you asked me which club surprised me most this spring, I wouldn't hesitate. Seven wins in eight exhibition games. That's the Phoenix, isn't it?
Their exhibition record was genuinely startling, yes. They were the quietest club on the hot-stove market, with almost nothing brought in from outside, so I had them finishing somewhere close to last year — which is why I put them in the bottom three. That said…
But the foreign players were extraordinary, weren't they? Spring meant nothing but short outings, and still the one-two punch of Luis Cardoso and Jake Barnett each took the ball twice and simply overwhelmed hitters.
If you judge by the exhibitions alone, Phoenix's two foreign arms were every bit the equal of Alkonen and Edwin, both of them ex-major leaguers. And the foreign bat, Clay Bryan, was just as impressive at the plate and in the field. On spring results alone, Phoenix can fairly claim it landed a historic group of imports.
I saw it the same way. But the player who became an even bigger story than those foreign standouts was someone else entirely.
Ha — if you mean Do Kang-hyun, then honestly, part of me wants to sit him down and ask how a player like that is only just now playing baseball.
If you had to name the player who stood out most while the Daejeon Phoenix piled up seven wins in eight exhibitions, the vote would have been unanimous. Do Kang-hyun.
12 AB · 10 H (4 HR) · 9 SB · 13 RBI · 5 BB
AVG .833 · OBP .882 · OPS 2.965
That isn't a real stat line, is it?
Seeing it and believing it are two different things. That's obvious. However short the sample, Do Kang-hyun's numbers are…
Park Joo-hwan hesitated. Then, with a hollow little laugh, as if he couldn't believe the words even as he found them, he went on.
They're an insane record. Every so often in the postseason, a player flips into crazy mode and posts numbers that shouldn't exist. Do Kang-hyun's line looks like that.
Because of a line like that, Phoenix fans are already saying they expect MVP-caliber production out of him.
Judged purely as an exhibition line, there's nothing to argue with. But it was a very short sample, and some of the pitchers he faced weren't first-team regulars — prospects, backups. Expecting the regular-season numbers to look the same is, realistically, impossible.
Hoping the exhibition line simply carries into the regular season would be asking too much. Still, hasn't the spring already proved that Do Kang-hyun is a far better player than anyone expected?
It has. That's why I said I wanted to ask him why he's only starting now. Once the league begins, the one player you have to watch — more than anyone else — is Do Kang-hyun. That much I'm sure of.
A historic group of foreign players, and a Do Kang-hyun who spent the exhibitions as what the fans are already calling a Lü Bu — a one-man army. At that point, shouldn't we be projecting the Daejeon Phoenix at least into the middle five, not the bottom three?
I wrestled with that myself. All four of them are new to the KBO, though, and how fast they adjust is the whole question, so I had to leave the uncertain part out. What I will say is this. If the four players we mentioned today keep doing in the regular season what they did in the exhibitions… the Daejeon Phoenix won't stop at the middle five. They can climb into the top two.
Do Kang-hyun switched off the television and let the exhibitions run back through his mind. Ten hits in twelve at-bats — a line so outrageous that, for all practical purposes, he had been the player under the brightest spotlight from the first game of spring to the last.
The fan communities talked of nothing but Do Kang-hyun, day after day. Baseball was the most popular sport in the country, and the sports channels, chasing that audience, kept his highlights cycling without a pause. On the strength of it he signed an unusually generous sponsorship with the bat maker Eastlight Bats.
The bat company was only the beginning. A sports brand had already sent word that it wanted him as a brand ambassador, and the nearer the exhibitions drew to their end, the more his days filled with a chaos no one else was living through.
"It isn't only the brand-ambassador offer. We're hearing from at least one potential ad campaign a day. Interview requests from reporters and networks are pouring in like a flood, but for the time being I intend to decline every one of them."
The higher Do Kang-hyun's profile climbed, the busier man in the room was his agent, Jang Woo-seok. Jang only laughed — the busier he was, the better the news — and something in that laugh made Kang-hyun feel the time had come at last to repay what he owed. Commercials, whatever they asked, he was willing.
Jang refused him outright. This was not the hour for outside work, he said. Every bit of strength and stamina had to be poured into the league opener, and into the games that would follow it.
"This isn't the time. More to the point, your value right now is a passing squall — a lot of noise, and very little that lasts. Once the regular season starts and you keep producing, that value will climb exponentially. Pick the fruit before it's ripe and all you get is a stomachache. We don't rush. We wait until it's perfect, and then we take the right piece."
Jang Woo-seok was sketching a much larger picture. Better to hold off, and hold off again, than to be tempted by pocket change and spend the image cheaply. Wait until the price was real, and move then. Hearing it, Kang-hyun had to grant that he had been in a hurry.
"When the regular season begins, far more is going to change than has changed already. You won't have changed at all, and still the people around you will insist you have — envy, resentment. Some of them will try to use you however they can. Whatever comes, you don't sway. The only thing you have to do is keep showing the baseball you're showing now. Every small, messy thing besides that, I'll take, and I'll handle."
"It feels as though all I ever do is take your help, Agent Jang."
"The better your results, and the higher you rise, the more I stand to gain as your agent. Don't forget — you and I are a symbiotic pair."
Jang pressed the word, symbiosis, a life of holding each other up, and Kang-hyun carved it into his chest as though he would not let himself forget.
"Oh — and take these."
Jang Woo-seok held out ten tickets. They were for the home opener, only a few days off. The Phoenix had always drawn a loyal crowd, and after a spring this good the opener had sold out long ago. The only seats still changing hands online were scalped, at several times the printed price.
"I got them through the club. You could have asked the front office yourself, but I didn't think you would, so I took them for you. This isn't any other night. It's Opening Day, and your first game as a professional. Your parents ought to be there, shouldn't they?"
When he had come home from the camp in Okinawa, Do Kang-hyun had shown his face and little more. He was thirty-three years old, and still his parents looked at him as nothing but the high-school ballplayer they had always worried over. He hadn't been able to meet their eyes for long. He left their house without staying even a single night, wanting to succeed in a way no one could miss — to show them their son was no longer someone to fret over, but someone whose turn it was to give care, not to receive worry.
"Give them the finest debut you can, and then whatever comes, they'll be able to believe in you and stand behind you."
"…Thank you."
He hadn't dared even to think of it. Or rather, he had been too embarrassed, too afraid of handing them one more worry, to find the courage. For that man, his agent's words were a greater help than he knew how to say.
That evening he went straight to his parents. He set two of the tickets down in front of them, and his mother clutched them on the spot, as if they were something precious, and wept. His father said nothing. For a long time he only stared at the tickets, his eyes gone red.
"Mom! Dad! I want to play baseball!"
In the thoughtless years, when every boy in a baseball uniform looked impossibly fine, that was how Do Kang-hyun had begun — by begging, and begging again, until they let him play.
The game he had believed would be nothing but joy and glory became, at some point, only hard and grinding work. At some later point it struck the wall of talent and turned into a thing so frightening, so miserable, that he wanted nothing more than to run from it.
He hadn't known, then. He had told himself that a sport this frightening and this miserable would be finished with if one person like him simply quit — that he would stop being a burden on a house that had never had enough. He knew now. For the two who had stood quietly behind him and given everything so their son might succeed, baseball had been a deeper and fiercer love than it was for anyone else, and a deeper ache wound through it.
It was the moment his resolve set like iron. On Opening Day, he would have to be better than anyone.