{"id":260766,"date":"2025-11-04T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260766\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T00:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:00:08","slug":"cody-ponce-has-drawn-interest-from-mlb-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260766\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody Ponce Has Drawn Interest From MLB Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former MLB pitcher Cody Ponce<\/a> is generating interest from MLB clubs after a dominant season in the KBO. Francys Romero reports<\/a> that numerous teams have scouted the right-hander over the course of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Ponce, 31, was Milwaukee\u2019s second-round pick in 2015. Four years later, the Brewers flipped him<\/a> to the Pirates ahead of the deadline in exchange for Jordan Lyles<\/a>. After five seasons in the minors, Ponce made his MLB debut for Pittsburgh in 2020, and from 2020-21, he appeared in 20 games (five starts) at the big league level, pitching to a 5.86 ERA and a 4.38 SIERA in 55 1\/3 innings. Following the 2021 season, the Pirates released him<\/a> so he could sign with NPB\u2019s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.<\/p>\n

Over two seasons with the Fighters, Ponce was solid if unspectacular, making 24 starts with an ERA about 10% higher than league average. The highlight of his tenure with the club was the no-hitter he threw in 2022. Unfortunately, the righty struggled tremendously in 2024 after leaving the Fighters and signing with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles<\/a>. Although he improved his strikeout-to-walk ratio, his groundball rate fell by about five percentage points, and he pitched to a 6.72 ERA in 15 games (12 starts). Some of that was surely the result of bad luck \u2013 his .382 BABIP was 20 points higher than that of any other NPB pitcher (min. 50 IP) in any of the previous five seasons \u2013 but nonetheless, he ended up spending almost as much of the season with the Golden Eagles\u2019 farm team as he did with the NPB club.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Ponce opted for a fresh start in South Korea, leaving the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles to sign with the Hanwha Eagles<\/a>. His move to the KBO turned out to be just what he needed. Over 29 starts and 180 2\/3 innings, the 6-foot-6 right-hander pitched to a league-leading 1.89 ERA. Ponce set the KBO single-season record with 252 strikeouts and also set a new single-game record in the KBO by punching out 18 opponents. Ponce\u2019s velocity has taken a notable step forward. After sitting 93.2 mph with his heater back in 2020-21, he now sits 94-98 mph and has added a kick changeup that wasn\u2019t part of his repertoire during his MLB run.<\/p>\n

Ponce also finished tied for the KBO lead in wins, securing the Triple Crown as he led the Eagles to an 83-57-4 record in the regular season \u2013 and an appearance in the Korean Series. His stellar performance earned him the Choi Dong-won Award, given annually to the best starting pitcher in the league.<\/p>\n

The last two winners of the Choi Dong-won Award, Erick Fedde<\/a> (2023) and Kyle Hart<\/a> (2024), both signed guaranteed contracts to return to Major League Baseball after their award-winning seasons in the KBO, so it stands to reason that Ponce could pursue an MLB deal of his own if his goal is to end up closer to home. While he struggled during his brief stint with the Pirates, that was a 55-inning sample from five seasons back.<\/p>\n

Ponce\u2019s stuff has since ticked up, and his more recent accomplishments against NPB and KBO hitters could certainly convince a team to look past the reasons the Pirates released him all those years ago. Ponce throws harder and misses bats at a higher rate than either Fedde or Hart did during their time in South Korea. If Ponce indeed opts for a return to North American ball, a multi-year deal \u2014 perhaps even one topping Fedde\u2019s $15MM with the White Sox \u2014 shouldn\u2019t come as a major surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former MLB pitcher Cody Ponce is generating interest from MLB clubs after a dominant season in the KBO.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,153340,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-260766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cody-ponce","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}