The winner in the bidding for the services for Korean first baseman Byung-ho Park is a bit of a shocker – the Minnesota Twins, who bid $12.85 million to earn the right to negotiate a contract with Park over the next 30 days.
.@Twins reportedly place winning bid to negotiate contract with Korean 1B Byung-ho Park. https://t.co/yYTXYK3lzA pic.twitter.com/Cx1Di6IZZ7
— MLB (@MLB) November 9, 2015
The 29-year old Park hit a ridiculous .343/.436/.714 with 53 homers in 2015 for the KBO’s Nexen Heroes, but some context is required for those numbers in the ridiculously hitter-friendly league. Jung Ho Kang, Park’s former teammate with Nexen, hit .356/.459/.739 with 40 homers in 2014 before jumping to MLB and the Pirates. In his 2015 rookie year, Kang hit a still respectable .287/.355/.461 with 15 homers, but those numbers pale in comparison to his video game stats with the Heroes.
Park is a strange fit for Minnesota. Joe Mauer is entrenched at first base because of his contract (owed $69 million over the next three seasons), despite a poor .265/.338/.380 season in 2015. Rookie Miguel Sano was the Twins’ primary DH in 2015, mashing his way to a .269/.385/.530 line with 18 homers in just 80 games. The signing of Park infers that one of these two players will have to play a different position, and that likely falls to Sano, who came up through the minors as a third baseman but has been linked to an outfield move in recent weeks and months.
Minnesota has a decent enough incumbent third baseman in Trevor Plouffe, a free agent after 2017. The 29-year old hit .244/.307/.435 with 22 homers this past season and his defense has ranged from below average to above average over the last four seasons. However, he made $4.8 million in 2015 and still has two years of arbitration left, meaning that he could end up getting a bit too pricey for the Twins and could be trade bit in a very weak market for third basemen.
As for the outfield, Minnesota has a vacancy in right field following the retirement of Torii Hunter, but gave significant playing time to a pair of well-rounded young players in Eddie Rosario and Aaron Hicks. Throw in the presence of uber prospect Byron Buxton and the promising Max Kepler, and the Twins have a pleasant logjam on their hands.
What will end up happening? The simple solution for the Twins is to move Sano to the outfield and swap Mauer and Park between first base and DH while retaining Hicks, Plouffe, and Rosario, allowing both Buxton and Kepler to get reps at AAA. Buxton looked overmatched in his 46 game major league stint in 2015, and played just 13 games at AAA last season. He’ll be 22 in December, and could definitely use some more time in AAA, especially considering how much time he’s missed with injuries over the past two seasons. As for Kepler, he’s never played at AAA and received just seven major league plate appearances during an end of season call-up. He doesn’t turn 23 until February so again, time is on the Twins’ side here.
And let’s not pretend like Hicks and Rosario are locks to produce at a high level next season. After two aborted stints in the majors in 2013 and 2014, Hicks had a relative breakout season in 97 games this year, hitting .256/.323/.398 with 11 homers and 13 steals. he’s only 26 and still has another pre-arb year of control left. Rosario made his major league debut in 2015, and hit his way to a .267/.289/.459 line over 122 games, homering 13 times and stealing 11 bases. And while Rosario is just 24, he only walked 15 times and struck out 118 times in 474 plate appearances this year – let’s not pretend he’s already a superstar.
Assuming the Twins get a deal done with Park, they’ve got options for 2016. Overall, he’ll make the club’s offense better, even if he hits at a level similar to Kang in 2015. But if the expected transition for Sano doesn’t work out too well, Minnesota will be in a difficult situation. Sano’s bat needs to be in the lineup every day, and considering how much the team will end up committing to Park, his bat also needs to be in there every day. Mauer can’t catch anymore because of his concussion history, and it’s unlikely he’d benefit from a position change at this point in his career. At some point, the topic of his future with the Twins will become an issue, and Terry Ryan and company could be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
