Korea Beating Shit Out of Venezuela

Several factors at work here which don’t make the WBC a very good indicator for comparing strength of leagues across countries, or determining whether participating players could replicate these results in MLB:

The WBC is held during spring training, when MLB players are in the worst shape of the year. These guys just started their season, and are not contractually obligated to train for this competition. It’s obvious from watching that the play is sloppy, the pitchers are pitching limited innings, and overall you’re watching players at the lowest point performance-wise that they’ll be all year. The Asian teams have an advantage in this area because they can force most of their players to train in the run-up to the tournament and are clearly in better shape than the North American/Latin teams, who when asked to show up to train for the tournament, ask if they should be there the day it starts or the day before. This is also apparent in the number of injuries suffered by the American team…they’re simply not in shape yet, and won’t be until May. Additionally, their parent MLB clubs discourage/prevent players from playing, and pull the plug at any small sign of injury. Teams with non-MLB players don’t have this issue to deal with.

The short format also results in a better chance for the less talented teams. Any time you decrease the number of trials, it increases the chances that the teams toward the bottom will have a better shot at winning. Take these same teams and put them through an entire 150-game season of competition amongst themselves, and you’ll see a much clearer separation. You saw the Netherlands advance over the Dominican Republic in their group by beating them twice, but I’m sure if you had them play 100 games, DR would win 85. Of course this is the reality of short-format and everyone knows this, but it’s a poor indicator of actual talent/ability.

I can’t figure out why the Korean players suck ass when they get to the majors. The ability and talent are clearly there.

Numerous reasons. The biggest one is that the sample size for performance in the WBC isn’t statistically significant if you’re trying to project to actual MLB performance. A Korean guy can hit .400 in the WBC over 10-12 games, but couldn’t hit .210 over 200 games of the MLB spring training/reg season/playoffs. Facing out-of-shape MLB players in March over a short tournament…is not the same as playing an entire season, day in and day out against MLB competition. Not even close. This is why you won’t see MLB teams getting horny over performances from foreign players in the WBC. They don’t want players that can succeed in the WBC, they want players that can succeed in MLB.

Another major reason is scouting. The players in the WBC are not scouted extensively (most aren’t scouted at all), and are thus complete unknowns to opposing teams. Once MLB scouts have seen a sample size of at-bats and have pegged weak spots, they can be pitched specifically to those weaknesses. Look at Choi Hee Seop for a prime example of this. He had a massive hole in his swing (couldn’t hit anything inside, couldn’t hit curveballs or off-speed stuff), and once the scouting report on him got around, he was hitting .200 and a couple months later was out of MLB.

The other important factor to keep in mind is the comparative depth of talent in Korea and in MLB. The gap between the top 5% of MLB and the bottom 5% is relatively small. You could replace the current USA team with a random sample of other American players from MLB, and you wouldn’t see much of a difference. The consistency of talent from top to bottom in MLB is very solid.

On the other hand, in the KBO, you’re looking at a huge dropoff from the top of the league to the bottom. The top 1% are solid (and I’m sure a few could play in MLB), but after that you’re looking at mostly A/AA level talent. Korean players face MLB-level pitching once a month. Being successful in that environment means nothing in comparison to facing it every day. Most Korean players that have had to make that jump to consistent high-level play couldn’t adapt to the depth of talent, it’s that simple.

Take the results for what they’re worth, which is very little in the bigger picture.

is MLB really interested in growing WBC into anything close to being the world cup of baseball?

No, they’re not. Initially I think they hoped it would become a huge event AND a good advertisement for MLB, but obviously the crowds/ratings/media interest have been a disappointment, and I don’t think you’ll see the event last much longer. It simply doesn’t have the support from the right people/organizations to make it a long-term success.

..we want tourneys like this to be SHORT, so we can see who can be the best WITHOUT having to depend on such factors.

I have no problem with that. It’s the only realistic way to hold such a competition. But let’s be honest about the significance of the results, what they mean to the big picture, and how irrelevant they are when it comes to trying to translate those results into MLB performance.

Bullshit. The track record of Koreans in MLB is extremely poor. You’ve got ONE player (Park Chan Ho), who had consistent, sustained success over his career. ONE.

Other than that you’ve got nothing but embarrassing flameouts (Bong Jung Keun, Cho Jin Ho, Kim Sun Woo, Koo Dae Sung, Lee Sang Hoon), one-year wonders (Kim Byun Hyun, Choi Hee Seop, Seo Jae Weong), journeymen (Baek Cha Seung, Ryu Jae Kuk), and one current player with some potential that hasn’t proven himself (Choo Shin Soo).

Given that track record, you can see why MLB scouts don’t rate the Korean players very highly and don’t have bidding wars worth tens of millions for them like they do for high-end Japanese players.

Stats don’t lie.

So why do you think Korean players didn’t pan out?

Not easy to simplify, but I would say the biggest factor would be competition. Elite Korean players are brought up in a system where the competition is relatively poor and depth of talent is minimal. Dominating against weak competition is the worst way to develop skill. It enforces bad habits and does nothing to shore up weaknesses.

I would guess that when they finally get to MLB, they’re not prepared for the rigors of facing top-level competition day in and day out. Going from top 1% to bottom 10% is probably a shock for most of those guys, it can destroy their confidence and make them question their talent. Not to mention the cultural issues they have to deal with both on/off the field. Combine all those and they’re fighting an uphill battle.

Unless you’re suggesting Koreans are inherently inferior to the Japanese…

Do I sound like the type of person interested in race-bait?

Some of the reasons (among many) that there have been more successful Japanese players in MLB than Korean are similar to the ones listed above. The Japanese League is better and deeper overall and provides a higher level of competition, better preparing the players. Japan has a better infrastructure and invests more in youth baseball, both private youth leagues and public high school/college teams. They devote more resources to fields and training facilities. I could go on and on, but the infrastructure, investment, and allocation of resources are extremely important and can’t be underestimated.

Does this mean the Japanese national team is better than the Korean national team? Of course not, and I never claimed that. I’m talking about the system as a whole, and its ability to produce elite players.

If the U.S. put their best players together, made them get in shape sooner, etc. it would be a totally different story.

Of course this is true, and also never likely to happen.

American basketball which takes the Olympics and some international exhibitions more seriously with the corresponding results

This is actually a very good example. it took several humiliations in international tournaments over 6-8 years before US Basketball decided to take them seriously and put an actual effort into maintaining a national team. Even so, enough foreign players are in the NBA now that the gap between the US and the rest of the world has narrowed significantly. The effort wasn’t necssary until this decade, but now it is.

If he hadn’t bashed Korean baseball as a whole the way he did, he would have gotten off his point more effectively.

If pointing out uncomfortable truths is “bashing,” I’m guilty. In fact, Korea has a very impressive record in international competitions over the last 5-6 years, which I recognize and respect.

But that record doesn’t signify the superiority of the KBO, or great MLB potential of Korean players, or anything else on a larger scale. It just means the Korean national team can put together a good tournament team and has played consistently well in several tournaments. Nothing more.

Trying to draw ridiculous conclusions from their performance (like the Korean media and numerous commenters have in the past few years have) is just ignorant of the larger reality.

But are you seriously telling me yesterday’s starting pitcher for South Korea can’t pitch in the MLB?

Maybe he can, maybe he can’t. If he’s anything like his Korean peers, there’s a 95% chance he won’t have a prolonged MLB career. I’m not saying he won’t break that mold, but if you look at the available data, the odds are stacked against him.

This is exactly the type of ridiculous logic jump I was referring to earlier:

“Yoon pitched well in 2 games of the WBC, therefore Yoon could pitch well in a 162-game MLB schedule!”

If you want to delude yourself and your flag-waving pals into thinking that a realistic progression, by all means knock yourselves out. But don’t bother claiming that here, because there are people that know baseball, that know better, and can back it up with facts proving it.

Success over a handful of games in the skewed environment of the WBC has ZERO predictive value of MLB success. ZERO.

Lee Seung Yeop dominated the WBC in 2006, and yet he can’t even stay in the top division of the Japanese League, much less even get a sniff from an MLB team.

The factor that separates MLB talent from the riff-raff is the ability to compete consistently, over a period of years, at a high level. Playing well for a few weeks in the WBC means jack squat shit.

There are tens of thousands of players in the world that can compete at that level for a few weeks. There are only a few hundred that can do it for years, in an environment where they are constantly being scouted and analyzed for weaknesses, under pressure to perform at the highest level day in and day out, and forced to compete for their roster spot on a daily basis by teammates and up-and-coming minor leaguers.

If you can’t see the distinction between that and the cupcake environment of the WBC, then you really shouldn’t bother entering the discussion, because you’re only embarrassing yourself.

If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, it’d be Christmas all year round.