Park Byung-ho of the Minnesota Twins fell to the dreaded Mendoza Line, after his second straight hitless day at the plate.
Park went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against the Philadelphia Phillies in Minneapolis on Thursday (local time), as his batting average slipped to .200. The Twins lost the game 7-3.
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(Yonhap) |
The South Korean infielder is batting only .161 (9-for-56) in June, with three home runs and six RBIs, while striking out 20 times. The big league rookie has fallen on hard times, after belting 105 home runs in the past two seasons in the Korea Baseball Organization.
While Park has displayed some pop, with a team-high 12 home runs, he has struggled mightily with runners in scoring position. He has gone only 6-for-51 with three extra-base hits and 19 strikeouts in such situations. It has prompted manager Paul Molitor to lift Park in late innings with men aboard. On Tuesday, with the Twins nursing an 11-10 lead over the Phillies and runners at the corners with two outs in the bottom eighth, Molitor sent in Eduardo Escobar to pinch-hit for Park. Escobar responded with an RBI single, and the Twins went on to take the game 14-10.
The Twins will have some crunching to do when Miguel Sano, a highly touted young slugger with 29 homers in 130 career big league games, returns from a hamstring injury.
Sano has been out since May 31 and is scheduled to make a minor league rehab appearance over the weekend. Given Park's recent adventures at the plate, the Twins may opt to send the South Korean to Triple-A Rochester to make room for Sano and to help Park get his groove back.
Molitor told the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Thursday the club will have to make some decisions once Sano rejoins the big league roster and added, "We're going to have to consider different things," including possibly demoting Park to the minors.
Park has been tinkering with his mechanics, hoping to find his answers against major league heat. According to the statistics site Baseball Savant, Park has so far faced 84 four-seam and two-seam fastballs at 95 mph or faster. He has managed just one hit -- a home run off Michael Pineda of the New York Yankees last Saturday--off such pitches, while putting only 10 of them in play. (Yonhap)
