4 MLB Players Turned KBO Stars

Most kids don’t grow up dreaming of being KBO stars.

The typical youth fantasy is to play for a major league team and be up to bat for the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth inning of the World Series. The bases are loaded. The Yankees are down by 3. The pitcher throws a curveball that hangs like a shirt in the closet.

Unfortunately, not every kid grows up to be a baseball legend like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, or Willie Mays. But don’t despair. There’s still hope.

Even if you’re not one of the best 600 players in the world and don’t make a spot on an MLB roster, there’s always foreign leagues.

On this page, we’ll go over what it takes to make the big leagues and talk about five MLB players who are KBO stars.

Becoming a Baseball Player

While they don’t pay as well as the MLB, foreign leagues certainly pay more than a minor league salary.

In fact, the average minor league salary is between $290 and $700 a week. Players have long bus rides and work out throughout the season without being fairly compensated.

Compared to the average MLB player, who earns $4.4 million a year, minor leaguers receive a pittance.

On the other hand, the average KBO player earns 161 million won per year. Exchanged to US dollars, that’s approximately $132,000. That’s 200 times more than the highest paid, non-40-man roster AAA player.

So, it’s easy to see why some minor leaguers choose to go play in the KBO.

However, many minor league players aren’t interested in playing in the KBO if:

• They’re not skilled enough to be a star in South Korea
• They don’t want to play in a foreign country that’s far away from their families
• They feel they may yet get promoted and are waiting for their shot at MLB

Despite this, many players are willing to make the jump to the KBO, whether they’re minor league players or floundering major league players. Some even return to the majors after improving their skills in South Korea.

These foreign players are some of the best the KBO has to offer.

If an American or Cuban pitcher is starting, there’s a good chance they’re an above-average player in the KBO. Look at probable starting pitchers and consider making bets on players born outside South Korea.

Likewise, former MLB or minor league players often excel as hitters in the KBO.


Check stat leaderboards to see if any of them are tearing it up for a team like the Doosan Bears. So, do your research before making bets on the KBO.

Some of the best KBO players are from other parts of the world. Knowing which ones excel can help you make more informed value bets.

1 – Jose Miguel Fernandez

The Doosan Bears signed Fernandez before the 2019 season, and he’s spent the last two years being a huge part of their lineup.

He hit 15 home runs last season for the Bears while posting an OPS of .892.

Before jumping to the KBO, he last played in America for the Bees. Fernandez turned in a good AAA season for the Salt Lake Bees, an affiliate of the Angels, in 2018.

Despite turning in a .931 OPS in AAA in 2018, Fernandez didn’t get a chance to play for a major league team.

Like many other KBO players, he could see that he wasn’t going to get a chance stateside and instead left for greener pastures in the KBO where he could be a star.

Before working his way up the Angels organization, Fernandez played in the Cuban Nation Series (CNS) for six years. Like the KBO, the CNS is an offensively powerful league, so the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt.

While he never had that same level of success in the minor leagues, his time in the KBO has been as productive as his days in the CNS.

He hit .344 last season for the Bears and is off to an even better start this year, hitting .456 over 115 PAs.

He helped lead the Bears to a victory in the Korean Series last year (the ultimate series for the KBO), and the Bears were off to a great start again this year.

Many types of bets will be juiced against them as the Bears have consistently been one of the most dominant teams in the league.

Regardless, if Fernandez can continue to have as incredible a hitting streak, the Bears may still be a good bet even when they’re the favorites.

2 – Adrian Sampson

Adrian Sampson is definitely a sleeper candidate to have a good first season in the KBO.

One reason he’s a sleeper candidate is because he started off the 2020 season rather terribly.

Sampson is was 0-2 and pitched to a 9.39 ERA over 7 ⅔ innings pitched. While it’s easy to look at this performance with the Lotte Giants and peg his KBO career as a bust, there are some reasons to expect him to turn it around in the future.

For one, he has a strikeout/9 innings (SO/9) rate of 7.0. Strikeout rates are one of the first stats to stabilize. In baseball, when a stat stabilizes, we know how good a player truly is.

Sometimes, players have hot weeks or streaks where they accumulate several wins, hits, or innings with a low ERA. Stats like ERA and batting average take longer to stabilize than stats like SO/9, so seeing him record an above-league average SO/9 rate suggests he’s capable of handling KBO hitters.

The SO/9 rate is also in line with his career norms. He has a 6.9 SO/9 in his 153 innings pitched in the major leagues. It’s not unreasonable to expect him to continue striking KBO players out at this rate.

He’s been plagued by a high hit of 9. If more of those pop-ups and grounders start turning into outs, his ERA can improve in a hurry.

The second reason we can expect Sampson to improve is because he’s been better than this in his major league career. He has an 89 ERA+ in the majors, and there’s no reason to expect him to perform any worse than that in the KBO.

The Lotte Giants are a good bet to improve the next time Sampson takes the mound.


It’s possible he just needs time to adjust to a new league. If you see them pegged as the heavy underdogs the next time Sampson’s pitching, consider making a run line or moneyline bet on the team.

3 – Aaron Altherr

Making his debut for the NC Dinos this season, Aaron Altherr looks to get his career back on track in the KBO.

His age 24 and 26 seasons for the Philadelphia Phillies were both above-average outings and during his time with the Phillies, he looked like he could potentially be a part of Philadelphia’s future.

He accumulated 1.8 wins above replacement in both of those seasons, achieving the same production as an MLB regular in both those seasons playing left field.

His value came from fielding in his age-24 season and hitting in his age-26 season, so he was playing well on both offense and defense.

Unfortunately, those would be his two best seasons stateside. Since his age-26 season in 2017 where he broke out offensively, hitting 19 homers while carrying a .856 OPS, he’s struggled to produce positive value on the field.

He had a dismal .181 batting average in 2018 playing for the Phillies. The team stuck with him to start the next year, but he was moved to the Giants then the Mets in 2019.

Across all three teams, he hit for a .136 batting average and only received 66 plate appearances in his last MLB season to date.

Altherr looks to have turned a new leaf after starting the 2020 season with the NC Dinos. He has been a big part of the NC Dinos’ incredible start to the season.

Don’t expect them to keep up this incredible performance when betting though. They barely finished the last season above .500, going 73-69, so the team’s performance might fall back down to earth.

4 – Preston Tucker

Former Astros prospect Preston Tucker has spent the last two seasons hitting for the Kia Tigers.

The Houston farmhand had a .938 OPS for Fresno in 2015, one of his best minor league seasons.

The outfielder put himself on the map with solid minor league performance while moving up the ranks in the Astros organization. But he never cemented himself as a regular in the Astros’ fantastic lineup during those years.

He bounced around between the Atlanta and Cincinnati farm systems before landing on the Kia Tigers in 2018.

He had a solid 2018 with the Tigers, batting .311 for the club and looks even better this year.

If the Tigers continue to get MVP level production out of Tucker, they may have a much better season overall than the last, making them a good team, favorite or underdog, to bet on.

Conclusion

Do you think any of these players will make their way back to the majors? Let me know in the comments.