Thursday, October 24, 2013

NC Dinos Instructional League Notes

The NC Dinos participated in instructional league games in Arizona against players with affiliation with MLB clubs with mainly players from their Futures League squad. While I wasn't able to go, Jason Cole was, and took some video that he posted online here, here, and here. So below are some of my observations on the Dino players in the videos. The videos are from Jason Cole's live look, so I didn't reproduce any screenshots or GIFs. Rosters and basic stats courtesy of Baseball in Korea.

Keum-Kang Choi is a RHP with impressive size at 6-5 209. The 24 year old appeared in 30 games as a reliever in the KBO, and wasn't impressive on a whole, but held his own and struck out a batter an inning.
In the video linked to above, he showed two pitches:
86-89 MPH fastball
79-81 Slider

The fastball had some two seam movement on it, and the slowest one looked more like some kind of sinker. The movement of his slider isn't exactly "tight" or crisp, but there is some good movement there, getting horizontal and then falling off vertically.

His delivery is pretty standard, he comes up with his leg but doesn't have a long pause before coming forward. His head isn't consistent from pitch to pitch and sometimes looks ugly, working against his body. He was the only pitcher in the videos, the rest are hitters:

Oh Jeong-bok is a right-handed outfielder who just returned from military service. He was sort of bullied by a 95 MPH fastball inside by a fellow right-hander. Sort of short (about 5'8), he has no real room to fill out. The swing is a little long, violent, and jerks heavily with an aggressive finish. He didn't adjust well to an outside slider, and was set up by it just like the pitcher wanted. Oh seemed pretty aggressive, but when he was looking for a breaking ball, he was able to reach it and put it in play.

 Min-woo Park is a small (relatively, 6-1 but 176 pounds) lefty hitter that seems to be able to take pitches. His swing isn't long, but doesn't appear to be too quick. Park sometimes falls out of the box in the middle of his swing and gets on top of the ball, so probably a groundball hitter. Park walked twice as much as he struck out in the KBO Futures league, but he didn't hit any home runs.

Cha Hwa-Jun is a lefty hitter with a little better set of shoulders on him, but he is just 5-7. He has an other way swing, with perhaps a little run out of the box. He can pull the ball, but probably has no real power (the 23 year old had just 6 Futures League plate appearances in 2013).

 Jun Heo is a right-handed hitting catcher with some size (214), but is not extremely tall (6-0). With that said, he doesn't appear to be hefty, but the body may give him a little power (he really struggled offensively in the Futures League). I didn't like the way he swung at the low fastball and he fell for a bad slider and couldn't stop his swing. His swing has a hitch, and he doesn't have great bat control.

Jae-won Choi has some height (6-0) but is thin (179), which may just be part of his frame, as there is not a lot to suggest he will "fill out" other than he is just currently skinny. Slight crouch, bit of a leg kick at the plate, seemed to get down to low pitch well. Choi hit for a high average with a few walks to go along with it in the Futures League in 2013.

Eu-tteum Park, a 23 year old lefty, has a small frame (154 pounds). He was
way ahead of changeup, with a violent swing, and not a lot of control. Did take a couple of fastballs just out of the zone, but was late when he got one he wanted to swing at. Also had a rough swing on a slider even though he had the platoon advantage. Hit .265 in the Futures League.

Chang-seob Lee is a right-handed batting infielder who had a very good year in the Futures League, though he was a little old. He has decent size, not too heavy for his body size (listed at 5-11 163). He struggled with fastballs without the platoon advantage.

Kim Seong-wook has some decent bat control, and can get to outside pitches without sacrificing his whole body, but it seems he will chase. A decent looking athlete, Kim is under 6 feet with probably no room to fill out. The 20 year old showed flashes of power and speed in the Futures League but had a mediocre K/BB and batting average. 

No comments:

Post a Comment