Next of Kim
3.5.02
Wednesday night in Bank One Ballpark,
Byung-Hyun Kim reports for work at his usual appointed hour, in the ninth inning. The sidewinding Diamondback does his usual job of dispatching opposing hitters with the cool surety of a piranha closing in on dinner in the deep. Biology aside, the similarities cease there, Kim being more precise and with more refined manners. And he needs his dental work done anywhere except Gillette.
He throws thirteen pitches for three swift outs, one a strikeout. One his game, Kim suggests that maybe his entrance music should be Frank Sinatra, warbling "Nice and Easy." But he is neither rakish nor cocky enough to be going
ring-a-ding-ding! in a snap-brim hat and a sharkskin suit, with a smoky-eyed woman on each arm.
The only thing wrong with this Wednesday night picture is that Kim is in the game at all, because the New York Mets for a second consecutive night have treated these Snakes like earthworms.
They abused starting pitcher Todd Stottlemyre with an RBI single and a three-run homer in the first inning. In the fourth, the Mets sentenced an innocent water cooler to twenty lashes with a dry baseball bat, by prying two runs more from Stottlemyre before he got the one-out hook. Four and two-thirds innings, three Arizona pitchers, and a seventh Met run later, manager Bob Brenly must have wanted nothing more than getting the hell out for the night.
The bad news was, a ninth inning was yet in order. The good news was the Met bullpen, who were likely to make swift enough work of the Diamondbacks with a six-run lead to uphold and defend.
Thus Brenly brings in Kim to speed the mercy killing, and the sidewinder behaves as though there is a one-run surplus to protect, rather than a six-run deficit to escape. Kim could now hoist his season's record to date as showing six saves - five baseball games and one manager's sanity.
Few may have noticed other than Diamondback fans and the opponents he has drawn and quartered. Byung-Hyun Kim seems a very distasteful letdown to those expecting that a certain pair of back-to-back ninth -inning World Series nukings, by a pair of mischievious aviatrixes named Mystique and Aura, would strand him in that Phantom Zone where World Series goats are sentenced to be frozen in their infamy.
Curiosity had struck prior to Wednesday night, since until then I had seen nothing of him in live action, and I looked at the numbers through 28 April. You can retire the lame Calvin Schiraldi analogies and "Byung Hung Sliders" puns now. The evidence says Kim is closer than you think to being the best short relief pitcher in baseball.
Until the Mets came to the Bob, Kim pitched in nine games for 9 2/3 innings of work and a 0.93 earned run average; he had allowed ten hits and only one run (earned), while walking none and striking out nineteen. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a 17.89 strikouts-per-nine average. He's only mildly hittable, with a .256 batting average against him through 28 April, but Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, and Scott Brosius can arise from their laurels: The National League through that date was slugging a none-too-exceptional .282 against him; only one his ten hits allowed had gone for extra bases. Getting
any bases against him was only slightly less difficult than getting through a National Hockey League playoff series without attempted decapitation: the on-base average against him was .275.
And before you among the hypercynics salivate upon the sight of him strolling in from the bullpen with men on base already, be advised that Kim in the same period dealt with eight inherited runners and stranded seven of them. Think about it carefully: he had the most stranded runners with whom to work out of the Diamondback bullpen, and he stranded 87.5 percent of those.
Among those closers that have inherited half or more the number of runners to the number of relief appearances, how many are likely to send seven of eight to Gilligan's Island? Mariano Rivera (Yankees) had eight inherited runners in eleven relief appearances through 28 April; five stranded, 62.5 strand percentage. Troy Percival (Anaheim) had four inherits in six gigs and two of them scored. 50.0 strand percentage. Danny Graves (Cincinnati) had seven inherits in twelve gigs; three strands, 42.9 strand percentage. Mike DeJean (Milwaukee): ten gigs, five inherits; three strands, 60.0 strand percentage.
Kim has pitched twice since 28 April, both against the Mets, and good for three innings of work (he was brought in to start the eighth and close out a 5-3 Diamondback win) with no inherited runners, a mere hit, and three strikeouts. That may shrink his strikeouts-per-nine average to a mere 14.3 or thereabout, but Kim has no complaints. Almost.
He wishes only that Brenly, a manager whose support he has otherwise cherished, would trust him just a little more against left-handed hitting. Brenly prefers to play left-hander against left-handed, and it is impossible to argue when Mike Myers is keeping them to hitting diddley, but it is likewise difficult to find very many right-handed pitchers who keep left-handed hitting to an .083 batting average as Kim has done on the season thus far.
It is his lone known complaint.
But watch him pitch now. Every few moments, Kim flashes a smile as engaging as it is unforgettable, half the small boy thrilled when he sees a magician turn a peacock into a pigeon, half the shy high school junior trying to work up the courage to ask that Angelina Jolie lookalike to dance.
And, watch his follow through. Every few pitches, instead of straightening up right away, Kim gives a playful, almost Rockette-high kick across his left leg with his right. No one accuses him of showing them up when he does it, and the aforesaid smile often as not punctuates it.
That periodic routine began as a way to steady himself, it was suggested, if his follow-through was too off-center. But it should matter nothing if it's really his way of reminding everyone, his own gently playful self included, that he has been
so O.K. for longer than anyone thinks. For those who waited for him to implode on contact when this season began, ain't
that a kick in the head.
Bunts
Where Have We Seen This Movie Before? - 2 May 2002: Mike Cameron of the Seattle Mariners goes yard four times in the same game against the Chicago White Sox. The two pitchers who allow his mayhem, John Rauch and Jeff Parque (Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully, following Cameron's mayhem, suggested during his own broadcast that no headline writer could resist such a banner as
Parque Floored), are optioned to the minors after the game. What a difference two decades makes. There is a Yankee owner who, two decades ago, would have fired the manager first.
Say Watkins! - Somehow, it
might be a comforting thing to know exactly why the Minnesota Twins seem so afraid to let the club be sold to a billionaire Alabaman who wants to keep the team in Minnesota and - the
horror! - build the Twins a new ballpark with his own financing and not a nickel's worth of taxpayer money. The Twins claim Donald Watkins has no proof he can afford to buy the team. Watkins claims he has submitted disclosure forms that outline net worth but the Twins have not questioned him about it or responded to his offer. How a known billionaire can't afford a mere $125-150 million baseball team is a question that may prove to have the two part answer of Watkins ending up as the next buyer of the Anaheim Angels and Commissioner Bud Selig ending up getting rid of his family business's market competition in Minneapolis.
©2002 Jeff Kallman.
Look what I found! Our own BluesDuke ... doing what he does best! Writing about baseball. &;-)
Hope you mean with private resources Chas. &;-)
Flattery will get you everywhere... ;)
Report from Dodger Stadium: The ballpark is everything it's cracked up to be for comfort and convenience. Unfortunately, the Dodgers weren't, not tonight - they got shut out, 3-0, by the Cubs (Mark Bellhorn went yard, the Cubs otherwise played little ball), Kevin Brown seeming to lose a little after he plunked Cub starter Matt Clement on the right bicep in the top of the fifth - while Clement had a no-hitter in the works. (Three more Cub pitchers - Ron Mahay, Joe Borowski, and Antonio Alfonseca - combined to make it a four-hitter.) Clement did stay to run the bases and eventually scored one of two runs on a Bellhorn single (Delino DeShields scored behind him). On the other hand, that was one hell of a postgame fireworks show...
When you become rich and famous, you will remember the little people who BYTT, won't you? &;-)