Former Pirates infielder Jung-Ho Kang is eyeing a return to baseball back in Korea.
An official for the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) told reporter Jee-ho Yoo that Kang asked to be taken off the "voluntarily retired" list last week. His old club, the Nexen (currently Kiwoom) Heroes, would have to agree to retain Kang for him to return. Kang had not contacted the Heroes yet, according to Yoo.
Kang, of course, got his start in the KBO, where he established himself as one of the best sluggers in the league, clubbing 40 home runs in 2014. The Heroes decided to post him as an international free agent that offseason, and the Pirates won the bidding war for his services.
Kang would finish third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2015 and homered 21 times in an abbreviated 2016 season, but ran into trouble that offseason after being arrested for drunk driving, his third such offense. Unable to secure a work permit, Kang missed all of 2017 and returned for just the final series of the 2018 campaign. The Pirates signed him to a one-year deal last offseason in hopes that he could be a cheap source of power. While he did homer 10 times, he struck out 60 times in 172 at-bats and was released on Aug. 4.
He signed a minor-league deal with the Brewers shortly after but never played in the majors with them.
But if might take awhile for Kang to return to the KBO. Under KBO rules, a player who has been caught driving under the influence as least three times is subject to a suspension of at least three years, so Kang might not be eligible to play until 2023. If that's the case, he would be 36 years old and would have barely played any competitive baseball since the end of the 2016 season.
The KBO regular season is scheduled to start May 5.
