The Phillies Are Still Ignoring The Asian Market

[philliesfiend55]

Are the Phillies Still gun shy from a few bad Asian signings over a decaDE AGO after all these years? tHEY JUST PASSED ON STAR kOREAN SOUTHPAW pitcher Ryu and have never explored the Asian market very thoroughly or seriously.
In 2001 they signed two Korean pitchers for fairly large signing bonuses. One was soon gone from the system. The other made it to AA-Reading for two seasons and peaked briefly with about a month in AAA. That was as close to the majors as he got.
It has been over a decade since those signings. I'd really like the Phillies to do more in scouting and signin some Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese players. Like their Johnny come Lately approach to signing Black players in the 1950s, the Phillies are being left behind by their conservative approach. They have gotten a few Asian players near the end of their careers like So Taguchi, who were signed originally by other major league teams, but Asian players have been coming to america soince around 1995 and the Phillies have not made a decent original signing to bringa player straight from Asia to the major leagues.

[Ben Grimm]

I'm not gonna kill them on that. Over the last decade, for every one posting that is simply decent, there are 4-5 that are total fails. Other than Ichiro and to a lesser amount - Godzilla - there really hasn't been much success from position players. Darvish had sick numbers in Japan. He came here and did well, but not at such an insane level that I'd think he'd be much better next year. I find pitchers from the Far East to get by on quirky deliveries and once there's film on them, they get found out rather quickly.