Wednesday, February 20, 2008

More thoughts about Kim

Now that I've had half a day to process the BK Kim signing, I'll like to look into it a little further. As usual, my knee-jerk reaction was probably just a bit overly negative, so let's look a little further into the signing.

First off, holy crap he's only 29. I don't even know how that's possible, but it is. On top of that, he still strikes out a batter an inning. From that perspective, I suppose it's only fair to say it's one of those moves that's "worth a shot" and "can't hurt anything." The problem that I have with it is that he walks a ton of hitters (since 2003, his K/BB ratio has generally been under 2:1, which isn't good) and he hasn't really been a good pitcher by any stretch of the imagination since 2003. He's only 29, but he definitely feels like another retread to me. Maybe if we keep him in the pen and only use him against righties at PNC Park, he'll prove me wrong, but even with all the positive things I just listed, I feel like this could get messy really quick.