Rhee Dae-eun

KT Wiz pitcher Rhee Dae-eun announced his retirement last month.  Rhee has had an interesting career, playing in North America, Japan and South Korea during his 14 year career.

Rhee originally signed with the Chicago Cubs after graduating from Shinil High School in Seoul, South Korea.  He pitched well in his first season in the US in 2008, going 4-1 with a 1.80 ERA in 10 starts with Peoria of the Midwest League but missed most of 2009 after having Tommy John surgery.  He bounced around the Cubs organization for five more years, getting as high as Triple-A Iowa in 2014, before becoming a free agent.  He moved back to the Far East, signing with the Chiba Lotte Marines for the 2015 season.

He pitched OK for Lotte his first season, going 9-9 with a 3.84 ERA in 37 games split between the starting rotation and middle relief.  He ended the year pitching for the Korean National Team in the 2015 Premier 12, beating Venezuela during the Group Stage and starting the semi-final game against Japan in which  Korea had their stunning ninth inning comeback.  His second season with the Marines did not go as well.  He spent most of 2016 with the farm team, going 10-8 with a 3.86 ERA.  His 10 wins led the Eastern League but he only made three appearances with the ichi-gun squad and posted a 7.20 ERA in them.  The Marines let him go after the season.

He returned to Korea but had to serve his two year military stint before he could join a KBO team.  He served his required time playing for the Korean Police Baseball Team which at the time played in the Futures League, the farm league for the KBO.  He was named to the Korean team for the 2017 World Baseball Classic but did not appear in any games in the tournament (Korea was knocked out in the first round).

Despite his 10 years playing professionally outside of Korea he was subject to the KBO draft once his military service was over and KT took him with their first pick of the "second nomination" of the 2019 draft (held in September of 2018).  He started the 2019 season in the Wiz's starting rotation but switched to the closer role mid-season and had 17 saves.  He missed a significant amount of time during the last two seasons due to injury and did not pitch in last year's Korea Series that KT won.

Rhee's Japanese and Korean cards are a bit sparse.  Most of his Japanese cards are BBM issues - 1st Version (2015-16), 2nd Version (2015), Genesis (2015), tbe Marines team set (2015-16) and The Ballpark Stories (2016) - although he did have a Bandai Owners League card in 2015 and a card in Epoch's Pacific League Premier Edition set in 2016.  In Korea, he's in the SCC KBO Collection 2, Premium Collection and Premium Collection 2 sets in 2019 and the SCC Battle Baseball Card Game Vol. 1, Premium Collection and Golden Premium Collection sets in 2020.  He is not in either of the 2021 KBO sets.  Here's a couple of his cards from both Japan and Korea:

2015 BBM 1st Version #090

2016 BBM Marines #M19

2019 SCC KBO Collection 2 #SCCR2-19/161 All Star

2020 SCC Premium Collection #SCCP1-20/W01