On the day that Josh Harrison got injured, Jung Ho Kang actually started for the Pirates. He went 1-for-4 with a strikeout, and his OPS dropped to .697. What he’s done since then, though, is pretty remarkable and beyond what anyone expected of him when the Pirates signed him over the winter. After last night’s game-breaking grand slam, he’s hitting .317/.382/.573 in his last 54 games (51 starts). That includes 11 homers and 14 doubles (of his 15 homers and 23 doubles on the season). Last night, he hit a grand slam to break open a frustrating 1-1 tie in the sixth inning, ensuring that JA Happ’s great start (the final line was six innings, three hits, two runs, ten strikeouts, no walks, though he’d obviously only allowed one run at the point that Kang stepped up to the plate) didn’t go to waste, and getting the Pirates a series win on the road in Cincinnati, which is not a place that’s been kind to them this year.
It’s easy enough to look at Kang’s numbers and wax poetic about them (I mean, I have before and I just did in that first paragraph), and it’s really easy to look back on the last 10 weeks and rattle off Kang’s list of huge hits (my favorite is not his most clutch hit, but the three-run homer that he hit against the Dodgers on Sunday Night Baseball, when Don Mattingly left Jim Johnson on the mound about four batters too long, finally pulled him with the Pirates up 9-5, and then Kang stepped up and greeted Joel Peralta with a three-run homer on the first pitch that he saw, while PNC Park exploded around him. It wasn’t a hugely clutch hit, but it was great moment. Kang in those huge moments are maybe my favorite parts of this season as a whole. He’s thousands of miles from home, he’s the only Korean player on the Pirates, and he comes through with these big hits in these huge moments that translate universally, both through the crowd reaction (at PNC Park at least) and his own reaction. Obviously I like to try and put what I see on a baseball field into words, but my favorite moments are still the ones that don’t need them. Kang has provided all of us with more than his share of those this year.
Of course, from the Pirates’ perspective, the more important part is that he keeps doing things like hitting a grand slam in the sixth inning of a 5-4 win. For a few years in a row now, the Pirates have dealt with infield injuries and other unforseen issues that have lead to a relatively thin bench at times, with people decrying the team’s depth and the front office’s inability to lend them enough of it. This feels crazy to me. Last year, Pedro Alvarez lost his ability to play defense entirely and bottomed out, but the Pirates didn’t miss a beat because they had a utility infielder capable of playing MVP-level baseball over the larger part of a full season. This year, that utility infielder reverted back towards his old performance level, got injured, and then the team’s starting shortstop got injured. The Pirates didn’t miss a beat, though, because they made an off-season international signing and have now gotten a performance out of said international signing that will likely garner both MVP and Rookie of the Year votes. Basically, two years in a row, their best infielder has been a player that wasn’t even a starting infielder when the season began.
Josh Harrison’s huge performance last year was a big part of the Pirates’ second-half surge to the wild card, and Jung Ho Kang’s huge performance this year is a big part of the Pirates’ building the National League’s second best record. This sort of thing is the reason why this Pirate team is built to last longer than the previous Pirate contenders of the early 90s, and it’s why even the prospect of Andrew McCutchen leaving in a few years doesn’t feel like it has to be a hard deadline for the club to win.
We don’t need to think about all of that today, though. The Pirates are 83-55, and headed to the playoffs for a third straight season. They’re still (barely) hanging on in the NL Central race, even though the Cardinals are on pace for 103 wins. Jung Ho Kang is a big part of the reason why, and it’s been a wonderful thing to watch.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
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