As anyone who watched today’s semifinal matchup between Korea and Venezuela knows, the Korean national baseball team is good. Ridiculously good.  Korea utterly dismantled a Venezuelan team chock-full of major league superstars, putting on a show of power, patience, good pitching and outstanding defense.

Meanwhile Venezuela cracked under the pressure, making 5 errors including an unconscionable dropped fly ball by Bobby Abreu, a sight with which Angel fans will soon be far more familiar than they want to be.

Many people have been talking about how Korea is the surprise of the tournament, but these people obviously have no idea what they are talking about, as Korean baseball has been on the rise for almost a decade now.

Korea first served notice to the world way back in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics, when they stunned a Japanese team loaded with stars to take the bronze medal, handing Japan its first medal-less Olympics ever.  Korea then finished second at the Intercontinental Cup in 2002 and in the Baseball World Cup in 2005, and actually outplayed almost everyone in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, going 6-0 to sweep through the opening rounds only to be knocked out in the semifinals in their only loss of the tournament.  Korea then promptly rebounded in 2008 by sweeping through the Beijing Olympics to take the gold medal.

Korea is definitely my favorite team to watch in the WBC.  What I love about them is that they have the total package.  They put their best players on the field, play outstanding ball in all phases of the game – defense, batting, and pitching, and their players seem to be running their absolute hardest on every single play.  Team Japan plays hard too, but they still do stupid small-ball stuff like an idiotic attempt to bunt Ichiro over with one out late in a game earlier in this tournament while down 1-0.

I won’t guarantee that Korea is going to win Monday night’s championship game. After all, baseball is virtually a .500 game. But I’ve already seen more than enough to say that they are the best baseball team on the planet, outside of perhaps the American League All-Star team.

With the winter meetings over, the hall of fame debates dying down, and all the interesting free agents already signed, we figured there’s no better way to liven up the early January baseball doldrums than with a Jose Lima update!

After going 0-3 with an 8.79 ERA in four starts for the Mets in 2006, Lima took his show on the road, playing last season for the Saraperos de Saltillo of the Mexican League. But Mexico is pretty close to America, and Lima was already well known in the Spanish-speaking world, so his arrival really couldn’t have been all that more exciting, beyond the naturally high levels of excitement that accompany any Jose Lima start.

But now Lima is set to introduce a whole new continent to his spicy Latin singing, his gravity-defying wife, his incurable genital herpes, and his 80-mph fastball.

Yes it’s true, the Kia Tigers, cellar dwellers of the Korean League, are on the verge of signing Lima to become their new ace. According to the Korea Times, “The Tigers hope that Lima could be a top-of-the-rotation starter for them.”

Lima would be the crown jewel in an offseason in which the Tigers have also signed fellow Major League castoffs Wilson Valdez, Jae-Weong Seo, and Hee-Seop Choi. I suppose it says something about just how bad the Kia Tigers and/or Korean baseball are that they are hoping that Wilson Valdez, who hit .211/.254/.277 in 256 major league at-bats can be “a power threat to protect Choi and Lee Hyun-gon at the heart of the batting order.”

Also of note is the fact that all four of the new players recently played for the Los Angeles Dodgers. If the Tigers are still looking for another pitcher, I’m pretty sure Mark Hendrickson is still a free agent.

In any case, it’s clear that once Lima Time hits, Korea will never be the same. Or as the Koreans will soon be saying:

?? ??! Believe it!

… he grabbed his right foot, placed it on top of his left leg and proceeded to hop and hop.

Apparently, there’s an explanation for this… after the jump, of course. Read the rest of this entry »