New York Mets Seo Jae-weong Turns Out To Be Underpaid Ace

Seo Jae-weong, a 26-year-old New York Mets pitcher who is at the bottom of the Major League’s income bracket with a $300,000 annual salary, has in fact outperformed Tom Glavine, the team’s ace with a whopping $11 million salary, a recent OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) study found.

Sports Weekly, a U.S. weekly magazine, on December 25 ranked Seo 48th with an OPS of 0.736 out of last season’s 225 pitchers. Al Leiter, Seo’s teammate, was ranked 56th (0.747). Two other Mets pitchers, Steve Trachsel and Glavine came in 63th and 81th with OPS points of 0.765 and 0.803 respectively.

Seo was ranked third in a traditional study designed to measure error and win ratios. Trachsel came in first with 16 wins, 10 losses and an earned run average (ERA) of 3.78. Seo, who posted nine wins 12 losses a 3.82 ERA, was outperformed by him in all three categories. Leiter, with 15 wins, nine losses and a 3.99 ERA, managed to get ahead of Seo just in two categories. In CBS Sportsline’s post-season pitcher ranking, Seo came in 47th, following on the heels of Trachsel (34th) and Leiter (43th).

While the traditional study is determined by relative factors such as a team’s overall defense and offense abilities while OPS is used to measure a pitcher’s ability in absolute terms such as the numbers of base runners and total bases he allows per season. All in all, although he in effect pitched the ball at an ace’s level, Seo was not fortunate enough to register a double-digit win ratio.

In the OPS survey, Jason Schmidt of the San Francisco Giants was ranked first with a 0.566. Among Asian major leaguers, Nomo Hideo came in first with (0.666), trailed by Seo. Nomo’s overall ranking was the 17th. Park Chan-ho of Texas Rangers and Kim Sun-woo of Montreal Expos were ranked 42nd and 67th respectively in Group C of 71 pitchers who pitched a total less than 50 innings.

Hwan-Soo Zang zangpabo@donga.com