Foreign Players in KBO
Series(1): Doosan Bears
There are many foreign players in KBO. Each team can contract three players and they can play in a same game but they can’t be all pitchers or batters. Normally KBO teams have two pitchers and one batter. In this “Foreign Players in KBO” series, I will introduce and analyze foreign players who play for KBO teams based on stats and playstyle of them. First team is Doosan Bears.
They did contract with Raul Alcantara, Brandon Waddell, and Henry Ramos. All of them have unique career with KBO.
Raul Alcantara, from Dominican Republic, already played three full seasons in KBO, one year in 2019 for KT Wiz, two years for Doosan Bears in 2020, 2023. He is 6’4” tall power pitcher. He throws 96mph fourseam fastball which is powerful enough in Korean league and His fastball makes other pithches more efficient. He has many breaking ball such as slider, curveball, change-up, sinker, and spliter. Also, he is a good inning eater. These are why Bears chose him again this year. He had an awesome season as an ace having 20 wins, two loses with 2.54 ERA last year. He is having one win and one lose with 2.30 ERA out of five games so far. I expect he will get more than 10 wins with under 3.00 ERA this year.
Brandon Waddell also has unique career with KBO because he was substitute-foreign player twice for Bears in 2022, 2023 and made a full-year contract this year for the first time. He throws 93mph fastball and slider, cutter. He started to throw sweeper from last year and that gave him more strikeouts than before and groundballs. He got 11, 18 wins for 2022, 23 even though he was substitute. So, many people are expecting him to have great season again this year. Now he has three wins, one lose, out of four games with ERA 2.76.
Finally, Henry Ramos from Puerto Rico. He also experienced Korean baseball few months. He contracted with KT wiz back in 2022 but he broke his toes during the game and he had to leave. Henry Ramos is switch hitter and he can make extra base hits well. He seemed he is adapting KBO well on spring training. However, he is not doing well after regular season started. He went to Futures league which is minor league of KBO for few weeks and now back on roster. He hit the first home run on April 23, average is 0.217 so far. He should make some more hits before Bears starts to consider substitute him. It seems like he should adjust his batting mechanism for Korean pitchers’ pitching combinations and velocity.
Next episode will be foreign players in LG Twins.
