Korean outfielder Ja-Wook Koo has hired Mako Sports to explore the possibility of making the jump to Major League Baseball, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. Koo, who turns 34 in February, is coming off a Korean Series MVP win as a member of the Samsung Lions.
The 6’2″ Koo is a left-handed hitter who has spent his entire KBO career with the Lions. His contract expired at the end of the season, and he has enough service time to explore both domestic and international free agency without being attached to the posting system. He has played parts of 12 seasons, batting .322/.392/.518 with 201 home runs in nearly 6500 career plate appearances. Koo tallied just under 500 trips to the dish this past season, batting .371/.458/.581 with 15 homers. He walked at a 13.3% clip against a 14.3% strikeout rate.
Koo won the KBO batting title and ranked third among 64 qualified hitters with a 1.039 OPS. He reportedly missed time late in the season with a left hamstring injury but returned to play in the Korean Series. He went 10-20 in the five-game set to win the MVP honors. It was unquestionably a strong season, but it’s worth noting that the quality of competition in the KBO is below that of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. Austin Dean, Sam Hilliard, Victor Reyes and Harold Castro — all of whom were fringe big leaguers — ranked within the top seven KBO hitters in OPS this year.
There hadn’t been much discussion about Koo making an MLB jump until the end of the Korean Series earlier this week. He’s had an accomplished KBO career but was a fourth outfielder on South Korea’s World Baseball Classic team in the spring. Koo’s age and corner profile seem likely to limit big league interest.
It’s not clear if Koo would be open to a minor league deal as opposed to what’d presumably be robust interest in the KBO. He’s evidently intrigued enough by the possibility of testing himself against MLB competition to hire representation to gauge the market. Since he’s not subject to the posting system, there’s no official limit on when he’d need to sign. The expected transaction freeze on December 2 could complicate matters further, though he’d still technically be able to sign a minor league deal during the lockout.
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