GLENDALE, Ariz. — When he was preparing to make the jump to Major League Baseball this winter, Hyeseong Kim sought out advice from fellow countrymen who made the move from Korea to MLB like former Dodgers Chan Ho Park and Hyun-Jin Ryu.
Their advice to Kim?
“They told me to eat well,” Kim said through his interpreter.
He must be doing that already as first baseman Freddie Freeman pointed out “I’ve heard he’s got the lowest body-fat percentage on our team.” More of a challenge for Kim might be the steady diet of high-velocity power pitching he will face in MLB.
“Obviously the average fastball velo from KBO to MLB, it’s a bit higher,” Kim said at the FanFest event. “So I’ve been focusing on working to hit high-velocity fastballs.”
There is a significant gap for Kim to overcome. The average fastball velocity in MLB was 93.8 mph each of the past two seasons, the highest since velocity has been tracked. In the KBO, the average fastball was 90 mph last season for the first time in its tracked history.
A .304 hitter over his eight seasons in the KBO, Kim reported to Camelback Ranch weeks early and went through “a lot of assessments and testing on my body.” The Dodgers’ hitting coaches have had Kim working on his bat path and direction since then.
“I was able to find out what I lack and what I’m good at,” he said. “And they’re using those test results to come up with my program. I was really impressed with how they go about that process.”
The Dodgers have been impressed with the skill set Kim brings to that process.
“He has bat-to-ball skills, which is something that can’t really be taught,” hitting coach Aaron Bates said. “He has the ingredients to be great. It’s just kind of fine-tuning things. Obviously, he was a great player in Korea and has all the components, so it’s just kind of making some tweaks here and there, all the while, letting him play and play free mentally, and put his best foot forward.
“Making contact. His bat-to-ball. Good hands, independent hands. Definitely, that’s his best skill.”
The Dodgers also expect the 26-year-old Kim to adapt quickly defensively. He won the KBO’s Gold Glove award (given to the best overall player at each position) at second base each of the past three seasons after winning it at shortstop one year before that.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Kim “can certainly win ball games with his defense alone” as a major-league rookie.
“Defensively, I think it’ll be very seamless,” Roberts said. “Offensively, there’s certainly more velocity. Controlling, getting his path right. Being able to handle balls that move late, handle velocity, use the whole field. He’s going to put the ball in play. He can run.
“I just think he needs repetition. So we’re going to try to get him out there as much as we can (in Cactus League games) to calibrate on big-league stuff. But he’s already shown me that he’s a quick study, and he’s got aptitude.”
KOPECH UPDATE
Reliever Michael Kopech is behind schedule this spring and is not likely to open the season on the active roster. But it has less to do with the “general inflammation” he said he had during the postseason and more to do with the challenging January with which he and his family dealt.
“It’s nothing serious,” Kopech said of the forearm discomfort. “I was dealing with a little of it last year during the postseason. … But then with trying to deal with that this offseason and also having some illness and ailments across my family it kind of slowed down my progress. I’m just a little behind is all it is. It’s not anything I’m concerned about as far as injury or anything like that. We had a tough January and it kind of made me put a halt to my training.”
The original MRI taken of his forearm last fall showed no structural damage, said Kopech, who had Tommy John surgery in September 2018 after just four appearances as a rookie with the Chicago White Sox.
The inflammation in his forearm was not serious enough to require a follow-up MRI, he said. But Kopech’s interrupted offseason workouts have left him long-tossing from 90 feet during the first week of camp.
“More than likely. I don’t really know,” Kopech said of starting the season on the injured list. “Things could happen quickly and I could be ready for our home opener. I’m not really sure, though, so it’s hard for me to say that definitively and be sure about it.”