Garcia Hot, Lima Not
Baseball Teams Reap Mixed Results From Foreign Players
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Jose Lima will never be known for consistency as Britney Spears is never to be associated with common sense.
So no team in baseball was taking a bigger gamble than the Kia Tigers, who betted that Lima could be a reliable starter to complement staff ace Seo Jae-weong and Yoon Suk-min on a team designed to live and die on pitching performance.
Less than 20 games later, the Tigers seem ready to bail out. Submerged at the league bottom with a 5-14 record, the Tigers assigned Lima to their reserve league squad after the 36-year-old veteran gave up six runs in less than two innings in his start against the Hanwha Eagles Sunday.
It remains to be seen whether Lima could get another chance with manager Cho Bum-hyun, as team officials are considering releasing him and using the spot to fill the team's need for a power hitter.
With veteran right-hander Lee Dae-jin coming out of a semiretirement forced by a shoulder injury and the team signing former 20-game winner Jung Min-tae to a short-term contract, Cho sounds ready to cut ties with Lima, who is 0-2 this season with a 7.43 ERA.
``Lima needs to regroup and find his form with the reserve team," said Cho, who believes that both Lee and Jung are capable of handling five innings per start.
``His stuff could get better, and he seems to have some bad pitching habits that tip hitters of the pitches," he said.
Lima's struggles epitomize the depressing state of the Tigers, who finished last in 2007 but started the season with renewed hope.
The acquisitions of Lima and former New York Mets prospect Seo gobbled the headlines, and the idea of a full season from former Tampa Bay Rays power hitter Choi Hee-seop, who impressed after joining the team in midseason last year, were enough to create a buzz among the tortured fan base in Gwangju.
However, with Lima and Seo failing to get the wins and Choi looking more like the hitter he was in the United States, padding the stat sheets with swings and misses, Tigers fans are now giving a collective sigh of ``here we go again."
Penciling Lima in a leading role was perhaps more of a confession than a strategy, reflecting the desperation on the part of the Tigers, once baseball's proudest franchise with nine titles, to shed a decade of irrelevance.
Lima was ridiculed as the walking definition of inconsistency during his colorful American career that included a 21-win season and a 16-loss season.
Hitters Faring Better Than Pitchers
As the Tigers fear the possibility of another season being sucked down the toilet, the resurgent Lotte Giants are beaming at the other end of the spectrum with a 12-5 record that only trails the defending champion SK Wyverns in the standings.
And former New York Yankees basher Karim Garcia is one of the players making a difference for the Busan team. Garcia, recruited by new Giants manager Jerry Royster, is batting .300 with six home runs and 17 RBIs. The presence of the Mexican veteran is clearly benefiting his teammate Lee Dae-ho in the heart of the order, with Lee batting .361 and leading the league with 21 RBIs.
Garcia is leading a pack of foreign hitters who are producing at the plate early in the season.
The 9-10 Woori Heroes, the newer version of the now-defunct Hyundai Unicorns, are looking more respectable than anybody imagined. Their league-leading .288 batting average as a team is making up for some of the flaws of a young pitching staff, and Cliff Brumbaugh is leading the offensive surge by batting .313 with five home runs and 19 RBIs.
Eagles outfielder Doug Clark is also anchoring a powerful lineup, hitting .325 with seven home runs and 15 RBIs.
Although this year's crop of foreign hitters has a chance to be the best in years, the same can't be said for the pitchers with the performance of Lima being more of a norm than exception.
LG Twins starter Jamie Brown is off to a horrible start, posting a 1-2 record with an 8.66 ERA. The Heroes' Jason Scobie, who pitched decently for the Tigers last year, is 1-2 with a 9.47 ERA, while the Wyverns' hard-throwing Darwin Cubillan is 1-2 with a 12.86 ERA.