Rangers posted a bid for hime, and I can't seem to find much on the guy other than he had a good 2007 2008 seasons and did well in the 2009 WBC. He is 6' 2 215 lb. Scouts say he has a nasty change up and a fastball at 90-95, but thats all I can find on the guy. Anyone know anything else?

Wikipedia says his team is bad, so he's apparently analogous to Felix in that regard. He's a 7-time all-star, won ROY and MVP in the same year (2006), and he's won the strikeout total 5 times and the ERA title twice. By my calculations his career K/9 is 8.78, and his ERA is 2.80. Basically, it sounds like he's a bit similar to Darvish in that he's a strikeout pitcher and is probably the best pitcher in his league.

I know he's Korean, not Japanese like the Street Fighter character, but I imagine his shirsey will sell lots, especially if he's good here.

Here's Newberg's tweet of a video of him with 13k's:
“@NewbergReport: Ryu 13k video -- 91-92 and a whole lotta very junky junk: http://t.co/kUqsIPVW”

Seems like a decent buy low candidate assuming the posting fee is cheap.

Whenever Ryu gets a strikeout, they should flash a graphic on the board that says "PUNCH OUT" and has an animated Ryu from Street Fighter delivering a dragon punch to the batter.

Yu and Ryu and pray for rain.

looked him up on the Tube of Yu....

He reminds me of an Asian Bobby Witt ironically..... but in a good way

does anyone know if Korean baseball is more like MLB or NPB?

Also think about if we do sign this guy and he does become part of the rotation. It would look like this.

Darvish (26 YO)
Harrison (27 YO)
Holland (26 YO)
Ogando (29 YO)
Hyun-Jin (25 YO)

wow talk about a rotaiton that has some upside...

Here's a decent scouting report with comparable players given. Says he's a "more polished Derek Holland" with better control and stuff, but a slower fastball. They put him between CJ Wilson and Dutch. Not bad company considering he's 25.

http://fantasycpr.com/2012/09/05/scouting-ryu-hyun-jin-off-the-radar/

Baseball America apparently has a scouting report that gushes about him, but it's for subscribers only, if someone can post some snippets. The link is in the bleacher report article.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1391889-is-hyun-jin-ryu-the-next-great-import-from-the-asian-baseball-leagues

I'm definitely interested to see what the posting fee is.

K Law has him 37th on his top 50 FA. Intriguing lefty reliever who can get both lefty and righties out. Avg. fastball, plus change up.

Caution: *snake in the grass alert.*

Even if the Rangers win the bid, his agent is Scott Boras.

Say no to bleacherreport

The winning bid was announced at $25.7 million. As usual no report on the team.

That has to be a team viewing them as more then a Lefty reliever. I'll be interested to see if its us.

And to my understanding Korean baseball should be closer to NPB but a level lower down.

I'm guessing one of the 2 teams in LA or KC.

Cubs won. Oh well.

$25M+ is a ton of money. To put this into perspective, the next closest bid to the Rangers for Yu Darvish last year was only a bit over $20M if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure this is partially driven by teams having more money, but even at that, that is bad business if he's only going to be a reliever.

Actually looks like the Dodgers won the bid. Not gonna lose any sleep over it. There are many other pitching fish out there.

I don't think this guy was ever expected to be a reliever?

The amount of bid was 25,737,737.33

So what is the significance of 737 if any? Central Texas area code? No significance?

Those numbers are supposed to be lucky in Korea.

I like the numbers meaning something, kinda like our bid for Yu, which ended with 34 (Nolan's number) and 11 (Yu's number).