Today's Profile on a Met who won't make the team
Today: Dae-Sung Koo
Counting down to spring training, the Mets have plenty of bad non-roster invitees who will not make this team. There have been these players on every team every year, some who do it just to generate a buzz at spring training, like Garth Brooks. Others do it because they can't realize that their careers are over, like Gerald Williams or Alan Benes.
Dae-Sung Koo became a New York Mets folk hero last year as a 36 year old rookie, but maybe that was the only thing he accomplished. On the mound he was Willie's funky favorite, throwing at an arm angle accompanied with insanely copious funk. Don't forget, this man wanted to be a Yankee so bad, he had his agent announce that he had inked a deal with the Bronx Bombers before it turned out that it was actually the Mets who had signed him. Koo threw nothing special, a garden variety fastball and slider, but he was utterly untalented as a lefty specialist, as left handed hitters had a whopping .379 OBP against him, making each lefty hitter that faced Koo almost as proficient as getting on base as David Wright. Ha. And I'm sure no one has been able to forget that 3-0 fastball he grooved down the middle to Carlos Delgado in Florida. That mere pitch may have ruined my summer right there. If that wasn't enough, the man was born in a town named Daejeon if that doesn't give you any reminders of last year's Mets bullpen. To add insult to injury, Koo also refused to warm up during an August game that I was unfortunate enough to attend in which Kris Benson was shelled during the first inning (most likely after he was out celebrating the Mets' peculiar 9-8 win over the Nationals the night before), making the Mets tax Juan Padilla and Aaron Heilman's arms further. To Koo's credit however, the man did hit that double off of Randy Johnson that could have been a triple or an inside the park home run. And he scored on Jose Reyes' sac bunt. From second. But he dislocated that shoulder on the slide and went on the DL for a month. Nice work, asshole.
Koo is a man quite confident that he will not make the team, as he has already bailed on Spring Training to go to Korea to train for the WBC, so Carlos Delgado can light him up there too. Dae-Sung Koo somehow must have tricked the Mets into thinking he was still under contract for this year just so he wouldn't be deported. What a bum.
Koo showing his noted athleticism by jumping over... traffic cones
Tomorrow--experience the wonder of insignificance and unlikeliness to make the team that is Bobby Estalella. See you then.
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