Rockies - Acquired Kim
Colorado Rockies - Acquired P Byung-Hyun Kim from the Boston Red Sox for C Charles Johnson and P Chris Narveson
Johnson’s irrelevant here and already gone from the Red Sox.
Kim’s got the funky delivery that some people on the site have suggested has been a plus for Coors Field pitchers. The problem still remains, however, that Kim’s fastball is gone and his arm is probably shot or at the very least, needs a whole lot more doctorin’. For all the stuff bandied about Kim, I think he’s handled it about as well as most people could; being in a foreign culture, injured, and losing your best talent and possibly, your job, has to be quite a downer. The Rockies will use him in the bullpen, the only place he should be now, but he’s not the pitcher he used to be.
The money going around is sorta difficult to track. Let’s just say the Red Sox are eating some amount of money so that they could get Chris Narveson. Narveson was previously a Cardinal prospect before going to Colorado in the Walker trade. Nothing’s very impressive about Narveson; both his stats and stuff are quite ordinary and there’s no star potential.
Ignore that Kim projection; the computer doesn’t know how badly his arm is mangled.
2005 ZiPS Projections
——————————————————————————————-
Player W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA
——————————————————————————————-
Kim 8 6 50 13 96 93 42 9 28 85 3.94
Narveson 8 12 26 26 146 158 92 21 76 90 5.67
Dan Szymborski
Posted: March 31, 2005 at 03:14 PM |
23 comment(s)
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1. Mikαεl Posted: March 31, 2005 at 03:40 PM (#1225339)And Red Sox management swears he isn't hurt. I assume they must have done the MRIs and the examinations and everything. The Sox doctors have a pretty weak track record, but, still, it adds another knot to an already complicated picture.
Kim says his balance and timing are off, and that he used a strength training method in Japan during the '03-'04 offseason that messed up his body. I have no idea what any of that means, but that's what he says.
The problem has to be physical - well, I guess unless he's been dogging it for two years and suddenly starts throwing 90 with movement in Colorado, but that's unlikely. I tend to think it isn't an injury, though that makes everything even weirder. I could call it a "mechanical problem," but that's just begging the question.
Good luck, BK.
He said it's the same slider, but it bites downward, slowly, because Kim can't give it enough velocity. If he were throwing it as hard as he used to, it would regain the up-up-and-away break.
So, the drop in velocity, then, is eve more central to Kim's problems than I had thought. He effectively lost both of his pitches due to the drop in speed.
I would love to see a split screen view of his motions: 1 from 2002-2003 or so, and 1 from 2004. I'll bet there are significant differences.
Kim's a 5-year vet, so he could refuse assignment to the minors if he chose. I assume this trade implicitly acknowledges that he decided that he would have refused assignment. If they could have stashed Kim in AAA and chose not to, then that's pretty dumb.
In his current state, BK shouldn't be pitching in ballgames which the Red Sox are trying to win. So, given that he couldn't be removed from the 25-man and he shouldn't be on the 25-man, the Sox were stuck trading him.
The money seems to work out as a wash due to the intricacies of salary cap, and the Sox get a marginal prospect.
Yup, they also said Lyon was healthy, both when he was sent to Pitt, and when he was sent to AZ. And Fossum was the healthiest Red Sock on record when he was shipped to the Dbacks. In fact, I think Theo is taking night classes at Harvard Med School so he can diagnoze his pitchers better. A smart kid, he is.
Is this a joke?
Mikael, I believe Kim still throws his slider hard enough for it to have it's (like you say) up-up-and away bite. Bradford throws his at 68 mph and still has an upward tilt to it. OK, not upward, but it stays up longer. True, the don't have the same release points. If Bradford throew his slider at 78, it would be the sickest thing imaginable. In the games I saw, Kim was throwing his at 76-78mph. A slight adjustment and he has the upshoot. If you can picture it, the higher you release a slider/curveball/breaking pitch the more downward bite it will have b/c of the spin you will put on it. I think if he just gets a little lower, and really tries to frisbee it upwards with his fingers underneath rather than a little to the side, we will see the upshoot.
That being said, I think we've seen the end of BK's 84 mph upshoot, ubersick slider
He's not the defensive stud he used to be, but he still handles a pitching staff pretty well and would probably be solid in a backup role as a smart catcher with some pop.
Could you email me your birthdate? I wanted to add you to my ZiPS projections and DMB disk for the year, if that's OK with you.
it's 2/14/78....my guess is that my projection would really suck, even though I'm moving into my "prime"
Not sure if that's accurate, but if it is, a prospect and a million dollars for Kim sounds like a good deal.
Nine years and a day early.
Cool.
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