More Asian Players In The 2018/19 Australian Baseball League

As I expected when I did my post a few weeks ago about Asian players in the Australian Baseball League this winter, I missed a few.  I got a message from Steve Smith on Twitter updating me on some of the guys I had missed.

Former MLB and KBO pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim is with the Melbourne Aces.  Kim pitched for the Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Rockies and Marlins between 1999 and 2007, most famously blowing saves against the Yankees on consecutive nights in the 2001 World Series.  After being released by the Pirates in spring training of 2008 I think he was out of baseball altogether for the next two seasons.  He spent 2010 with the Orange County Flyers of the independent Golden Baseball League and 2011 with NPB's Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles although he never made it off the Eagles' farm team.  He moved on to Korea and spent 2012-13 with Nexen and 2014-15 with Kia (actually I think he spent 2016 with Kia as well but never got off the farm team). 

2014 Super Star Baseball Season 2 #SBC02-112

Former Tokyo Yakult Swallows pitcher Shogo Nakashima is on roster of the Sydney Blue Sox.  Nakashima was the first (and only) pick of the Swallows in the ikusei portion of the 2014 NPB draft out of Fukuoka University.  He made Yakult's 70-man roster in 2016 and made his ichi-gun debut that season.  He only got into 5 games with the top team over the next two seasons however (3 in 2016 and 2 in 2017) before the Swallows released him.  He spent 2018 with De Glaskoning Twins of the Dutch Major League (Honkbal Hoofdklasse).

2017 BBM Swallows #S35

Steve also mentioned that the Adelaide Bite have a couple corporate league pitchers on their rosters - Tohru Kikue and Ryo Takeuchi.  He thinks both of them play for the Honda team.  The Auckland Tuatara have a Shikoku Island League player - Yuki Harada of the Kagawa Olive Guyners.  There's also a couple Mainland Chinese (aka the Peoples' Republic of China) players in the league - Gui Yuan Xu (Auckland) and Bruce Wang (Adelaide) - Xu is from the Orioles organization.

About a week and half ago Geelong-Korea announced that it had signed three new former KBO players - Joon-Suk Choi, Dong-Gyun Woo and Geon-Yeop Heo.  Choi is the most famous of these three, known for his prodigious bat flips as well as his prodigious belly.  He hit 31 home runs a few years ago for the Lotte Giants but was released after a poor season this past year with the NC Dinos.  Woo was the top pick of the Samsung Lions in the 2008 draft (which was actually held in 2007 I think) who was released by the team after the 2017 season - he spent some time this past season with Kagawa of the Shikoku Island League.  Heo was the fourth round pick of the SK Wyverns in the 2012 KBO draft - he got into just 11 games with them over the past few seasons and was released after this past season.  There are baseball cards for Choi and Woo but I don't know of any for Heo. (H/T MyKBO for the news story.)

2010 KBO "Game set" #AD-007

2016 Diamond Winners #PA02-SA008 (Woo)

In addition to the players there are a couple guys of interest on the sidelines.  First and foremost is Geelong-Korea manager Dae-Sung Koo.  Koo is a veteran of the KBO (Binggrae/Hanwha Eagles 1993-2000, 2006-10), NPB (Orix BlueWave 2001-04) and MLB (New York Mets 2005).  He also spent five winters pitching for the Sydney Blue Sox.

2000 Teleca #78

2003 Calbee #165

He's not listed on the Ace's roster but according to Steve Eiji Kiyokawa, the roving pitching coach for Seibu, has accompanied Lions pitchers Hiromasa Saitoh and Hayato Takagi to Melbourne.  Kiyokawa had a 15 year career with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp and Kintetsu Buffaloes between 1984 and 1988.

1994 BBM #423

I suspect that there are Japanese coaches accompanying the Marines players with Auckland and the Baystars players with Canberra but I haven't been able to find out who they are.