In a `Crazy' Time, Former Athletics Starters Straily, Brooks Ready To Go in Korea

Dan Straily and Aaron Brooks are ready to start playing regular season games in Korea, where the season begins this week. Both men have started for the Oakland Athletics and both have opted to try and find success pitching across the Pacific Ocean after some up-and-down MLB times.

With the opening of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season, there will be more focus than one would normally expect on former Major Leaguers playing on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Save for the small five-team pro league in Taiwan, the 10-team KBO will be the only game in town in terms of baseball – in terms of most sports, really – globally starting with the first pitch, currently set for about 10 p.m. at five different stadiums, all of them off limits to fans in the age of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

So, for former A’s starters Dan Straily and Aaron Brooks, there will be plenty of attention.

That’s particularly true for Straily, who gets the opening day start for the Lotte Giants, Brooks will have to wait a day or two before KIA Tigers manager Matt Williams, the third base coach with the A’s last year and now the Tigers’ manager, hands him the ball.

Straily pitched for the A’s from 2012-14, going 13-11 with a 4.11 ERA in 41 games, all of them starts. He pitched for five different teams in the last six seasons before heading to Korea where he’ll get about $1 million for pitching this season.

Lotte had to leave his wife, Amanda, and the couple’s 2½-year-old son, Jaxon, in January to head across the Pacific, not to Korea, but to Australia, where Lotte held spring training. Amanda is a nurse, and the couple made sure they knew what they were getting into, because COVID-19 was starting to have its impact even then.

"One of the conversations my wife and I had was this could be goodbye until the season is over," Straily told Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller from Straily’s apartment in Busan. They feared South Korea could lock down the country while he was playing, which would prevent his wife and son from visiting.

"We were as prepared as we could be, but it's not super-ideal. No one wants to be away from their family. As baseball players, we're good at adapting. But this adapting is different than any other situation I've been in."

Brooks pitched all of 2018 and the first half of 2019 for the A’s, both starting and coming out of the bullpen (18 games, six starts), before Oakland traded him to Baltimore, where he worked mostly as a starter (14 games, 12 starts).

He’s been an immediate hit with his Tigers’ teammates, posting a 1.05 ERA during spring training and told the Korean Yonhap news service that he’s hoping to peak just as the season starts.

"It was a little difficult to change around my spring training routine because pitchers usually slowly get stretched out as far as pitches and innings go," Brooks told Yonhap. "We are currently still trying to figure out how to stay sharp and on schedule but still stay healthy because there are still questions about when the season will start. But I've just tried to lean on our coaching staff and just throw whenever they recommend."

Since Brooks and Williams were both with the A’s in 2018-19, they know each other. And Brooks said that “definitely made the signing easier.”

"Regardless of what team he was managing, I would always want someone like him in my corner," Brooks said. "I had already heard there was some interest even before Matt was a part of the team, but having him as manager definitely helped ease my mind, and reassured me that it would be an amazing experience."

Still, the COVID-19 lockdown of more than six weeks has made the experience different than imagined.

"You know, it's crazy," Straily says. "Everyone is experiencing the same thing. It's so far out of our control that panicking and worrying about it isn't going to do any good. I don't know if that's life lessons from baseball, but you can only control what you can control. You can't get more baseball than that, but it's true."

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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