As regular readers of this site are probably aware, I’m a supporter of Korean baseball. I think the talent here is underrated, and I enjoy toutin’ it, scoutin’ it, and basically trying to show the world I know something they don’t. Isn’t that why people spend hours of their lives writing blogs?

But then I read this kind of article  and I start to change my course. I start to wish Korea didn’t win the gold medal and I regret rooting for Choo Shin-soo. Maybe you can find this kind of drivel in Japan and Taiwan as well, but this is just dumb. Let’s take a look at the whole thing piece by piece.

Choo Shin-soo Scores High in Major League

Hmm. Ok, I can see this bad boy is a whopping four paragraphs long. The fact that we’ve got the phrase “scores high” in a baseball article makes me think we have someone who doesn’t normally write about baseball. Or write, period.

Choo Shin-soo of the Cleveland Indians is the best Asian hitter at least this season in U.S. Major League Baseball. In the home match against the Detroit Tigers on Monday, Choo drove in two runs, making one hit in four at bat and with one walk as No. 3 hitter. He compiled a batting average of 0.310. He has slammed 13 home runs with 59 RBIs in 89 games this season.

Now, here we have the idea “Asian hitter” introduced in the first paragraph and I’m a little weary. I suppose we sometimes think of East Windup Chronicle as a primarily Asian baseball site. It’s not out of the question we would measure Asian players one against the other. The fact that this is a Korean newspaper makes me suspicious. My guess is that race is going to loom large here and if that’s the case we’re going to be talking about Japan and quite possibly Dokdo at some point.

Also, we have MLB identified as U.S. Major League Baseball. It’s either one or the other buddy. Feel free to say United States major league baseball if you want to be kind of dorky, but you can’t have it both ways. Home match is jumping out too. I think we’ve got someone who either studied in England or Australia, or possibly had a home tutor from one of those countries. I’ll go with the latter since he’s not pluralizing at bats or using a definite article to identify the No. 3 position in the lineup.

Still, Choo is unquestionably having a great second half. No one can argue with that. Well, except maybe people from other Asian countries would argue with that.

With that he stands out among Asian baseball players in the MLB. Currently, there are only 10 of them — Choo, eight Japanese players and one Taiwanese. Ichiro Suzuki (Seattle Mariners), who has a 0.313 hitting average, did slightly better than Choo.

Actually Choo is standing out amongst all MLB players in general, not just Asians. This reporter is selling him short. He’s also selling Asians short in saying there are only 10 — Kosuke Fukudome, Tadahito Iguchi, Akinori Iwamura, Kenji Johjima, Masahide Kobayashi, Hiroki Kuroda, Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima…ok, that’s 10 and I’m only at at M and haven’t counted Choo Shin-soo or any Taiwanese players. I think it’s safe to assume the writer wouldn’t dare count Dave Roberts and his half-Japaneseness as Asian.

In terms of OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging), the standard that comprehensively evaluates each hitter’s performance, Choo recorded 0.954, a top score among MLB hitters. He ranks ninth among the MLB hitters who have had more than 300 times at bat. Choo is outperformed only by star players such as Manny Ramirez (LA Dodgers), Lance Berkman (Houston Astros), Milton Bradley (Texas Rangers), Alex Rodriguez (New York Yankees), and Carlos Quentin (Chicago White Sox). Japanese hitters are behind Choo by more than 0.15.

Hmm. OPS. Ok, I like OPS. Not sure if anyone who knows what OPS is needs New York Yankees in parenthesis next to Alex Rodriguez. But then what is this that “Japanese hitters” are behind Choo by more than 0.15? Is that a cumulative OPS of Ichiro, the Matsuis, Johjima, Fukudome, Iguchi, Iwamura, So Taguchi? If it is, then Japanese players are having one heck of a year and would have to be considered the superior Asian race playing in USMLB.

Japanese people do not recognize Choo as the “best Asian hitter”, however. Japanese baseball fans argue that Choo has failed to meet the required minimum number of times at bat to qualify. But others admit the Korean has the edge over their countryman.

Says the unnamed 15-year-old writing his first article for the English Chosun Ilbo. He also says he heard all Japanese baseball fans think Ichiro has a bigger penis than Choo Shin-soo, that Dokdo is theirs and that Kimchi causes stomach cancer. Still others not counted in the original “all” think Choo is a better player, but those are just the Japanese people who know that Japanese people are originally from Korea.

Also from the English Chosun: ‘Superbacteria’ in Korea Came From Japan: Scientists