Dan Duquette says Orioles will not sign Seong Min-kim

[weams]

and his agent,

Roy Firestone knows about those guys,

[weams]

Incredibly bad form. Duquette, not you all.

Hey, the is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room...not the smoothest

[Guest rochester]

I think the kid is a victim in this, sure. The O's scout(s) screwed up. That's why that didn't resign him, IMO. Whether the O's should have still signed him for the original contract or signed him at all is a more gray area. MLB and the O's should talk to the Korean baseball federation on his behalf.

This kid signed a contract with assistance from an adult - his country's baseball federation got upset - canned the contract and barred the O's. If the kid has no barriers (i.e., bans, suspensions and the like) then he is not a victim - if there is it is not the O's fault - if the kid can play then he loses nothing.

If the screw up ended in the contract being valid and the kid ending up being really bad, would the O's be a victim and be able to get their money back? Did the kid (and representative) tell the O's that they were making a huge mistake offering $500K to a kid that no one else thinks is any good?

It was a mistake - move on - the kid lost nothing, the O's saved $500,000.

[Can_of_corn]

This kid signed a contract with assistance from an adult - his country's baseball federation got upset - canned the contract and barred the O's. If the kid has no barriers (i.e., bans, suspensions and the like) then he is not a victim - if there is it is not the O's fault - if the kid can play then he loses nothing.

If the screw up ended in the contract being valid and the kid ending up being really bad, would the O's be a victim and be able to get their money back? Did the kid (and representative) tell the O's that they were making a huge mistake offering $500K to a kid that no one else thinks is any good?

It was a mistake - move on - the kid lost nothing, the O's saved $500,000.

Last I heard is he was banned from playing organized baseball in Korea.

[CA-ORIOLE]

Hey, the is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room...not the smoothest

I would have to think DD's time away from the game really hurt him here. It's technically DD's fault as he's the captain of the ship, but his support staff really let him down on this one. That said, I'm not really sure why the Orioles are somehow responsible to this kid when the Korean's have been so vindictive about it, and if the Korean's are being vindictive to this kid, that's on the Korean's and not us. Yes, I feel bad for the kid, but I don't see where we owe him anything.

[Can_of_corn]

Hey, the is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room...not the smoothest

You talking about Duquette or Lucky Jim?

[weams]

You talking about Duquette or Lucky Jim?

Good point!

[Lucky Jim]

You talking about Duquette or Lucky Jim?

Good point!

I saw that tide building.

[OFFNY]

.

If I had to guess, I would say that this will not happen again with any team in the foreseen future. That's the only good thing that will come out of this whole fiasco.

Still, that doesn't do a damned thing for this Kim kid.

[Malike]

DD did something stupid, no doubt. How come Kim is without fault in any way? Are we to believe that he had no idea he shouldn't have been negotiating with a MLB team, and was completely oblivious to the rules in Korean Baseball? Nobody want's to see the kid get punished, but I'd find him just as culpable as Duquette for what transpired. When you try to skate the system there are consequences, they both took the risk, and both deal with the consequences. People making Kim out to be the unwitting victim are fooling themselves, I'd suspect.

[Can_of_corn]

DD did something stupid, no doubt. How come Kim is without fault in any way? Are we to believe that he had no idea he shouldn't have been negotiating with a MLB team, and was completely oblivious to the rules in Korean Baseball? Nobody want's to see the kid get punished, but I'd find him just as culpable as Duquette for what transpired. When you try to skate the system there are consequences, they both took the risk, and both deal with the consequences. People making Kim out to be the unwitting victim are fooling themselves, I'd suspect.

I absolve him of culpability due to his status as a minor.

[MrOrange82]

DD did something stupid, no doubt. How come Kim is without fault in any way? Are we to believe that he had no idea he shouldn't have been negotiating with a MLB team, and was completely oblivious to the rules in Korean Baseball? Nobody want's to see the kid get punished, but I'd find him just as culpable as Duquette for what transpired. When you try to skate the system there are consequences, they both took the risk, and both deal with the consequences. People making Kim out to be the unwitting victim are fooling themselves, I'd suspect.

The below quote is from this article. I haven't sourced or double-checked it, but, if the "history" outlined in the full article is accurate, not only is it frightening...but it also puts (IMO) and even more significant onus on DD because...he's done all this before. Many times.

In a few weeks, Kim is set to enter his senior year—South Korean secondary schooling lasts three years, not four—as one of the top left-handed high school pitchers in his home country. He pitches not only for his school but for the South Korean 18U team, the equivalent of a national juniors squad, and his precocious mastery of the curveball has not only drawn attention from scouts in his homeland but from overseas in America—from Major League Baseball.

Kim knows what that means. Just about every kid in the world with a curveball and a dream knows what it means. Major League Baseball is the promised land; the font from which all good things (and a good deal of money) flow; the alchemical means by which a guy who can throw a ball 60 feet without hitting anything but a catcher's mitt can become something unto a walking god.

For a couple months, men from one of these teams—the Orioles, an American League team in Baltimore—have been telling Kim and his family that they think he could be one of those guys, and today they back up that talk with a promise: a minor-league contract to play baseball professionally in their organization with a $575,000 signing bonus.

Kim signs. Of course Kim signs. Elite professional players in South Korea—the very, very best of the Korean Baseball Organization—earn maybe $200,000 a year, tops. And here are the Orioles, offering him almost three times that much money and telling him to come over to America to see if he can earn a whole lot more. That's not even counting the cachet that comes with being in a MLB organization; as nice as being a top left-handed high-school pitcher is, the KBO, NPB, and Taiwanese professional leagues find an MLB roster credit more enticing. That $200,000 a year that the elite of the elite South Korean-born players make in the KBO? That's where the compensation scale for former MLB players begins. Everyone will overpay for a ringer.

And this is all part of the sell: a whole lot of talk about best possible outcomes. Perhaps it seems strange to Kim that the Orioles are the only team interested in him; that they're offering him over half a million dollars when they're the only bidder at the table. Even if it does, the Orioles are giving Kim 575,000 very good reasons why that shouldn't matter. After all, if the Orioles didn't think he was worth that much money, they wouldn't be offering it, would they?

So on January 17th, Seong-Min Kim becomes the richest kid in his class and celebrates, because he's taken a crucial first step to true greatness—and the Baltimore Orioles announce that they're buying fully into the East Asian international free agent market, as new Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations Dan Duquette had promised when he took the reins of the American League East's resident disaster in November.

The disaster doesn't take long to spread. On February 2nd, the Korean Baseball Association and Korean Baseball Organization file a formal complaint with Major League Baseball regarding the conduct of the Orioles in signing Kim.

On February 8th, Kim is banned from baseball in his home country of South Korea indefinitely at both the amateur and professional levels.

On February 16th, Major League Baseball voids the contract between Kim and the Baltimore Orioles.

It is the third week of April now, and in both South Korea and America, the baseball season is underway without Seong-min Kim. He has nowhere left to play.

[Malike]

I absolve him of culpability due to his status as a minor.

Perhaps its the cop in me, but I'll call B.S. He was advised by someone. I see minors make some real bad choices, and they shouldn't be resolved of culpability due to their age, and its not like he was 12 years old. I'm probably a bit jaded, but I hate making excuses for people, and I see far too many people trying to be absolved of responsibility when they make a bad choice.

[Malike]

The below quote is from this article. I haven't sourced or double-checked it, but, if the "history" outlined in the full article is accurate, not only is it frightening...but it also puts (IMO) and even more significant onus on DD because...he's done all this before. Many times.

From that site:

The Classical is an independent sports website. We make no attempt to be comprehensive, or even to offer a reliable guide to the world of sport at any given moment. We are not a smarter version of what you can find elsewhere. We're not the media. We are a never-ending, wide-ranging conversation between writers and readers about baseball, basketball, soccer, football, fighting, and anything else in the sports world we consider compelling.

That's pretty much all I needed to read, and I'm honestly not trying to dismiss your research.

[Can_of_corn]

Perhaps its the cop in me, but I'll call B.S. He was advised by someone. I see minors make some real bad choices, and they shouldn't be resolved of culpability due to their age, and its not like he was 12 years old. I'm probably a bit jaded, but I hate making excuses for people, and I see far too many people trying to be absolved of responsibility when they make a bad choice.

Was he advised by someone? I have not heard one way or another. I asked Patrick who runs NPB tracker about agents for Japanese players and he stated most of them get one when they join MLB.

I think it is entirely possible that Kim was a 16 year old with an imperfect mastery of English who was approached by the Orioles with a WOW! offer in hand and assurances that everything was on the up and up.