PITTSBURGH — Jung Ho Kang’s 2016 season is a bit of a metaphor for the way things have gone for his entire team.
Kang missed the entire first month of the season while recovering from off-season knee surgery. He came back early — probably too early, general manager Neal Huntington has admitted — but he was red-hot out of the gate.
In his first month of action, Kang hit .298/.371/.667 for a 1.038 OPS. Those are pretty serious power numbers and represented a dramatic improvement in his 2015 numbers.
But then, the cracks started to show.