'It's not the major leagues - and that's OK': With MLB paused, KBO takes center stage

Before Dan Straily arrived in Korea six weeks ago, his new club, the Lotte Giants of the Korean Baseball Organization, sent the 31-year-old right-hander an information packet to help him better acclimatize to his new workplace.

The packet, which covered things such as navigating the language barrier and conventions of Korean culture, also contained an entire subsection on bat flips, a veritable art form in the KBO.

"The Korean players, and (within) the Korean culture with baseball, they see it as like the last part of your swing," Straily, an eight-year MLB veteran who pounced on a guaranteed contract overseas following a dismal 2019 campaign with the Baltimore Orioles, said in a telephone interview last week. "And it is for the fans."

In the coming weeks, many American fans will get their first taste of the KBO's distinct flavor. With Major League Baseball on indefinite pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ESPN reportedly reached an agreement to broadcast six KBO games per week, with their coverage beginning Tuesday, the league's deferred Opening Day.

Straily was the Opening Day starter for the Giants, allowing two runs, three hits and three walks in 5.2 innings. He left trailing 2-1 but Lotte came back to win 7-2 over KT Wiz.

Like MLB, the KBO's season was derailed by the coronavirus, which pushed the start of its campaign back six weeks. But Korea's much lauded testing and containment strategies enabled the 10-team league to resume preseason play two weeks ago, albeit with numerous safety protocols, such as no fans allowed and no spitting, which will remain in place indefinitely. The league still hopes to get in a full 144-game regular season.

The quality of play, needless to say, is well below that of Major League Baseball. "The Koreans playing in Korea dream of going to the major leagues someday," Straily says, and the league's handful of deposed big leaguers, like himself, typically venture over to beat up on inferior competition for the purpose of revitalizing their major-league careers. Most recently, that strategy worked out for Brewers pitcher Josh Lindblom, Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly, and the Nationals' Eric Thames before them.

Still, it's the highest-quality baseball being played in the world right now, and so long as MLB remains on hiatus, the KBO will have center stage, effectively filling the baseball void in North America's heart with its own rules, aesthetics, and style of play.

"It's not the major leagues - and that's OK," Straily says. "It's very good baseball, but it's just different. The style of play is different. The style of what the hitters are trying to accomplish is different. ... Just kind of everything about the game is a little different.

"But again, that's not a bad thing. It just is what it is."

So how, exactly, is it different?

Well, for starters, the KBO has several rules and structural elements that differ from Major League Baseball. Unlike MLB, the KBO uses a balanced schedule, with each of its teams playing the nine others 16 times. Each club is allowed a maximum of three foreign-born players. The league features a universal designated hitter. Regular-season games that remain deadlocked after 12 innings are declared a tie. And, eventually, the league's top five teams make the playoffs, with the top team receiving a bye into the best-of-seven championship round, the Korean Series.

The differing aesthetics between the two leagues, however, loom larger than the relatively minor discrepancies in the rules, and any such comparison has to start with bat flips. They really, really, really like to flip their bats in Korea. They flip their bats on homers. They flip their bats on foul balls. Such insolence would warrant retribution in the big leagues. In Korea, however, the bat flip is, as Straily noted, indispensable, simply the final motion in the swing's kinetic chain.

"There's going to be times when guys bat-flip stuff when it's a popup, and that's just part of the KBO," Straily says. "Obviously, if it happened in America, it'd be very polarizing. You'd see a lot of guys see it as like, 'Oh, it's entertainment.' And then you’d have other people be like, 'No, he's showing us up.

"It's part of baseball here."

Korean baseball looks different in the field, as well. Sound fundamentals are paramount. Flashy plays are exceedingly rare.

"We never see anybody backhand a baseball," Straily adds. "Like, they try to get in front of everything."

Interactions between the players and umpires, meanwhile, are both less frequent and less adversarial.

"When you jog out to the mound, you bow to the umpire," Straily says. "It's a respect thing. There is no talking back to the umpire. There is no questioning the umpire."

And, of course, Korea uses the metric system, which, depending on how involved ESPN wants to get with its broadcasts, could confuse some viewers.

"Seeing everything in kilometers per hour, (that) might take a little bit of adjusting for some people," Straily says.

Baseball doesn't merely look different in Korea, though. The tactics of play - which is to say, the way managers operate - differ, too. Despite the relatively cozy confines of KBO ballparks (and prior to 2019, at least, the league's hitter-friendly reputation), managers tend to play more small ball than their North American counterparts, placing a greater emphasis on bunting, stealing, and situational hitting.

"In the first inning, the three-hole hitter could be laying a bunt down to squeeze in a run to get the lead," says Scott Richmond, the journeyman right-hander who spent parts of four seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays before signing the Lotte Giants ahead of the 2013 campaign. "Sometimes, these old-school managers, their philosophy is (simply), 'Win.' And you can't win if you don't have the lead. So they get the lead and then they set up their bullpen accordingly.

"Hitters in America would be quite upset if you pay them a bunch of millions of dollars and they're going up there bunting, squeezing, and moving them over in the first inning," Richmond says. "It's like, 'Hey, you're paying me to hit the ball. Let me see this guy and see what I can do, (maybe) do some damage here.' So it's just different."

Indeed, the centrality of small ball within the Korean game is undeniable: In 2016, the KBO held a bunt derby as part of its All-Star Game festivities.

In addition to their relative tactical heavy-handedness, managers also tend to be far less forgiving in Korea. Poor play will earn players a mid-game benching, a maneuver seldom seem at the sport's top level.

"If a guy's having a bad game, they're not afraid to pull him out of the game in the third inning and put the backup and have him finish the game out because (the starter) struck out his first two at-bats and made an error," Richmond says.

Some may find the KBO's conventions charming. Others may not. Ultimately, though, it's high-quality baseball that's being televised, and that should be a welcome sight for any fan irrespective of their opinion on bat flips or bunts.

"I think people will find it very entertaining," Straily says. "I think people will be happy just to have baseball on TV. Even though they won't know very many of the players. I think fans are just going to take it for what it's worth and enjoy the game, enjoy the style. And it's great exposure for the KBO. (It'll) show people that what's going on over here is good, high-quality, fun baseball."

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.