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November 19, 2012

Resident Fantasy Genius

Scouting Hyun-Jin Ryu

by Derek Carty

While we might be in for quite a wait before another Yu Darvish comes over to the States, this offseason does bring us an interesting arm from the Eastern Hemisphere. As you’ve heard, southpaw Hyun-Jin Ryu was recently posted by his Korean Baseball Organization team, the Hanwha Eagles, and the Los Angeles Dodgers won negotiating rights with a $25.7 million bid. While the Dodgers have not yet decided whether they will sign Ryu or allow him to return him to Korea for another year, there stands a real chance he will be coming to Major League Baseball for the 2013 season. Today, I’ll be discussing what we should expect in the case that he does become a Dodger.

By the Numbers
We won’t spend too much time on Ryu’s numbers because the context of the league he plays in can obfuscate a player’s true talent level. The KBO is interesting in that the talent level is very diverse. From what I’ve heard, there are players ranging in skill-level from American collegiate ball all the way up to MLB-caliber talent. In terms of overall quality, the league is said to be a bit below Nippon Pro Baseball (where Darvish came from), but naturally, this wide range of talent makes KBO numbers hard to directly translate to Major League Baseball. Still, they’re worth a look, so here’s what we have on Ryu over the past four seasons in the form of percent better than average—so for 2012, his ERA was 30 percent better (i.e. lower) than league-average. (2009-2010 data collected from Baseball Reference, 2011-2012 data collected from MyKBO.net):

Ryu has certainly been a very good player—one of the very best in KBO. To provide some context, Darvish posted ERA numbers well above 100 percent, though Ryu’s performance in strikeouts and walks was pretty much on par with what Darvish did in NPB. Ryu has led the KBO in strikeouts for years and even bumped his strikeouts up considerably this past season. He also appears to have formidable control, although he’s struggled with home runs over the past two years (which could be a sign of bad luck).

Scouting Hyun-Jin Ryu
To get a better idea as to the kind of pitcher Ryu is, I recently spoke with some scouts who have seen him pitch over the past few seasons.

There is some debate as to which role Ryu is best suited. Some reports in the States (the most prominent being Keith Law’s) have said he’ll succeed as no more than a long reliever, and my scouts said they’d heard other scouts expressing the same sentiment. None that I spoke with personally, however, shared that opinion (and it’s their opinions that I trust the most). In fact, they were adamantly positioned in the other camp—the camp that thinks Ryu can be a quality major-league starter—making specific mention of these concerns and firmly disagreeing. And with a total cost that figures to be in the ballpark of what Oakland paid for Yoenis Cespedes last offseason on a deal two years longer than what Ryu is asking for, it stands to reason that the Dodgers like him as a starter as well.

So what does he bring to the table? Ryu is said to throw a four-pitch mix. His fastball is average, a bit straight with velocity in the 89-91 mph range, though he can dial it up to 94-95 at times. His best pitch is his changeup, easily a plus offering with good arm speed, deception, and fade. He fills out his arsenal with two breaking balls, both of which grade out around average and break at the same angle. His slider is the better of the two, with the slow curve used more as a show-me pitch.