By Kang Seung-woo
Staff Reporter
When former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Karim Garcia of Mexico joined the Lotte Giants, there were concerns about how well he would perform in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) after other MLB castoffs had struggled in the Korean league.
However, the 32-year-old lefty, who had the most prolific MLB career of any foreigner in the KBO since the league began importing players in 1999, has lived up to his reputation.
Garcia, who hit his 30th homer of the season Wednesday night against the Samsung Lions, is in contention for the KBO's Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.
His home run total has him in a tie for the league lead with Hanwha Eagles first baseman Kim Tae-kyun. As of Thursday, the Giants had seven games left while the Eagles had four games, so Garcia has a slight edge over Kim in the race for the home run crown.
Garcia, who is hitting .283, also leads the league in RBIs with 109, which is six more than Kim Dong-joo of the Doosan Bears.
Since the Korean league started in 1982, 18 players have led the league in both homers and RBIs in the same seasons, and 11 of them won MVP awards. In the past three seasons, American Larry Sutton of the Hyundai Unicorns, the Giants' Lee Dae-ho and Lions power hitter Shim Chong-soo have topped both categories.
In addition to his gaudy statistics, Garcia was the leading vote-getter for the All-Star game and helped the Giants earn a playoff berth for the first time since 2000.
If Garcia wins the MVP, he would become the third imported player to win the award, joining Tyrone Woods and Daniel Rios. Woods became the MVP for the OB Bears, a predecessor of the Doosan Bears, in 1999 after setting the single-season home run record with 42. Rios won the award while pitching for the Bears last year when he topped the league in wins, ERA and winning percentage.
SK Wyverns lefty Kim Kwang-hyun is considered Garcia's biggest rival in this year's MVP race. The 20-year-old pitcher has a 15-4 record and 130 strikeouts with a 2.55 ERA. He's contributed to the Wyverns topping the regular-season standings for the second consecutive year.
Kim's victory total leads the league, with two more wins than the Eagles' Ryu Hyun-jin and the Kia Tigers' Yoon Suk-min. Kim is second in the league in strikeouts with nine fewer than Ryu and ERA as his is 0.11 higher than Yoon's.
Garcia played for seven teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, in his 10-year MLB career, during which he totaled 66 homers, 212 RBIs and batted .241.