Korea and the O's

On the one hand:

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Via Twitter:

@DanielKimW:

@jorgearangure Baltimore Orioles' scouts are now banned from all baseball stadiums in Korea.

He also tweeted:

@DanielKim:

@jorgearangure Dan Duquette... very famous in Korea right now. Plus, the kid is not even a prospect. Very bad signing. #whatWEREtheyTHINKING

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On the other:

"Kim is expected to come to the United States soon and train in California before he leaves for Sarasota and the start of the O's minor league spring camp early next month.

"He is a player that was on the Orioles' radar for a while and certainly even before Duquette took over.

"He was one of the top youth pitchers in Korea and when their national team would go out, he would be their lead pitcher. He was known by the Orioles' scouting staff and I also had knowledge of him through my contacts in the Far East," Duquette said.

It seems not everyone values Kim as the Orioles do. ESPN's Keith Law said this about the signing via Twitter:

"The O's gave $550K to a 5'9" Korean HS lefty throwing 80-83 with no feel for a breaking ball. Nice use of savings from cutting pro scouting.

"Duquette said Kim throws harder than that and the Orioles have seen him do it.

"His current velocity is 88 to 90," Duquette said. "He throws hard. Some scouts may have seen him in a tournament where it was 30 degrees, basically freezing and they may not have seen the velocity, but we've seen this player several times and we've seen him work in a range of 88 to 90 mph."

And:

"Duquette said there is a decent chance that Kim could start the 2012 season with a full-season club like Single-A Delmarva.

"I think he's a good candidate for that and the reason is he has an advanced curveball and can throw it for strikes. Left-handed pitchers with top quality breaking balls have a weapon they can use to get out left and right-handed hitters and there aren't a lot of them. Kim has a good delivery and good control," Duquette said.

"I think a big thing is for Kim to come to the States, get his feet on the ground and get acclimated to the Oriole organization and also the culture of Major League Baseball. So we should be able to do that. If he pitches well in spring training, he'd be a candidate to make one of our A (ball) teams. If he needs a little more time to get acclimated, he would go with one of our extended spring training teams and play on one of our summer (short-season) ballclubs."

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If this member of the national junior baseball team really isn't a prospect, there's no reason to get this upset. But then, they have a track record:

"Byung-Hyun Kim and Hee-Seop Choi were also both suspended for leaving for the U.S. before completing high school, but those suspensions were eventually dropped and both players have since returned to play in Korea."

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Looked at Korean dailies (non-sports dailies) and found no articles in English or Japanese. Found one in Korean, but the blurb was only a paragraph long. Mentioned the kid was already 18, but they still might be using the older Asian method of age counting. (One year old at birth.)

So, the choice is between the collegiate spitball artists of the press, a stat-head turned media snarkmeister with a hard-on against the Orioles, and anonymous scouts, against DD, who has made some clear and definite statements to the media.

Short of distributing photo ID of every scout in the O's organization to the ticket vendors, I'm not sure how this will inconvenience the team that much. What's to stop them from walking up and buying a ticket? What's to stop DDs pre-Oriole Korean contacts from doing the scounting.

This should be interesting. Of course, if DD's right, Law et al. will pretend the smell isn't from their flatulence.