P · 2021

Kwang Hyun Kim

St. Louis Cardinals National League CentralP

Age: 33
B/T: L/L
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 195 lb

Born: July 22, 1988 in Seoul, Republic of Korea
MLB debut: July 24, 2020

dbWAR: 1.1
PA: 29
AVG: .115
OBP: .148
SLG: .154
wRC+: -25

Kwang Hyun Kim is a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. In 2021 he hit 0 home runs and knocked in 2 RBIs, notching 3 hits across 29 plate appearances in 18 games. His batting average was .115, 52.7% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .148 clip and slugged .154, for an OPS of .302, 58.5% lower than the league mark of .728. He averaged 68.3 mph off the bat, hit 10.5% of balls in play at 95 mph or better and made contact on 82.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his -25 wRC+ puts his offence 125% below average. That comes to -0.3 dbWAR — -4.3 runs with the bat, -0.0 on the bases, +0.0 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2021.

wRC+-25

wOBA.139

ISO.038

BB%0.0%

WAR-.3

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2021. These four terms sum to -3.4 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR.

BattingBaserunningPositionReplacement

Batting

Standard and advanced, by season.

																				Trend
2021	18	29	3	0	2	0	0	9	.115	.148	.154	.038	.176	0.0%	31.0%	.139	-4.3	-25	-0.3	—

Pitching

Standard and advanced, by season.

																			Trend
2021	27	21	106.2	7	7	1	98	41	80	39	3.46	4.34	1.28	6.8	3.3	81	102	0.9
2020	8	7	39.0	3	0	1	28	7	24	12	1.62	3.88	1.03	5.5	2.8	36	87	0.6

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2021. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	5	5	0	0	0	2	.000	.000	.000	.000	40.0%
vs RHP	24	21	3	0	0	7	.143	.182	.190	.171	29.2%

Season

Opponent batting by the side the hitter bats from, 2021. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHB	103	90	14	0	12	26	.156	.252	.200	.218	25.2%
vs RHB	349	315	84	12	27	54	.267	.331	.422	.327	15.5%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2021.

Loading 19 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 19 tracked batted balls in 2021. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 0.0%
Exit velocity: 68.3
Max exit velo: 99.9
Hard hit: 10.5%
Sweet spot: 21.1%
Launch angle: -19.3°

Barrel rate0.0%

Exit velocity68.3 mph

Hard hit rate10.5%

Contact rate82.7%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2021.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Kwang Hyun Kim hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by

By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	29	—	—	—	—	—	—	.115	.148	.154	.139
Bases empty · thin	19	19	1	0	0	0	7	.053	.053	.053	.046
Runner on first · thin	5	3	0	0	0	0	2	.000	.000	.000	.000
Runners on · thin	10	7	2	0	2	0	2	.286	.375	.429	.360
RISP · thin	5	4	2	0	2	0	0	.500	.600	.750	.576

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Rows under 25 plate appearances are marked thin — at that size a rate moves several dozen points on one hit. Counted from play-by-play, 2021.

Pitch sequencing

What Kwang Hyun Kim throws in each count, and what he follows each pitch with. Select any cell for the breakdown.

ShowBatter

Four-seamSliderChangeupCurveballSinker

Select a count to see exactly what Kwang Hyun Kim throws in it.

Pitch arsenal

What he throws, how hard, and how often it misses in 2021.


Four-Seam Fastball	41.0%	731	89.1	2,131	39.5%	10.8%
Slider	37.6%	671	83.5	2,113	49.9%	27.4%
Changeup	11.8%	210	80.4	1,603	35.7%	27.7%
Curveball	8.9%	158	69.6	2,141	43.7%	38.0%
Sinker	0.8%	14	89.0	2,076	21.4%	16.7%

Kwang Hyun Kim's arsenal by usage. Velocity is average release speed in mph, spin in rpm, and whiff rate is misses per swing — the cleanest single measure of whether a pitch beats hitters.

Head to head

Put Kwang Hyun Kim beside up to three others.

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Kwang Hyun Kim

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.