The Yankees have scouted twenty-nine-year-old Byung-Ho Park, a first baseman in the Korea Baseball Organization (the professional baseball league in Korea). Per his page on the KBO League site, Park has an on-base of .441 in 565 plate appearances this year, with 48 home runs and 33 doubles. That’s much home runs. That’s also much doubles. And it’s not like this is a one-off – last year Park hit 52 home runs, and 37 the year before. This is interesting news, but there are a ton of red flags: that Park is doing this in a markedly less competitive league for one (mark this down as a giant red flag – perhaps a sort of red tapestry, if you will); also that he is twenty-nine, which means he is more or less at the peak of his ability and therefore not likely to develop any further; also that the Yankees already have multiple first basemen, one on contract for next year, Mark Teixeira, and one who is ostensibly the heir to the position after that, Greg Bird.
