Zach Wilt: Kim proving he belongs in O's lineup

Last night marked Hyun-Soo Kim's sixth consecutive start and 19th game played for the Baltimore Orioles. The Korean outfielder is slashing an impressive .382/.469/.509 on the season and he collected three hits, a walk and two runs scored in the O's wild 13-9 win over the Red Sox. Two weeks ago, I made my case for Kim and suggested that the O's play him regularly, at least for a bit, to see what they have with him. Now that we have a better idea, let's dive in and take a look.

Wednesday night's game was Kim's third three-hit performance of 2016. As Matt Taylor pointed out, Kim is just the second Oriole to have a trio of three-hit nights in his first 20 career games. He joins Sherman Obando who had four three-hit games in his first 20 in 1993. Joey Rickard had two three-hit games in his first 20 with the Orioles.

It's been impressive to see Kim pick up hits all around the diamond. His spray chart shows that most of his ground ball hits are to the right side while his line drives have been distributed pretty evenly. Most of Kim's flyball base hits are to the left side of the field, but his lone home run was pulled down the right field line. He has a 0.9 degree average spray angle, which is an above average ability to hit the ball the other way.

Kim has hit .382 on the season with a .435 batting average on balls in play, a number that is sure to level out as the season goes on. Currently, the league average BABIP is .297 and it usually hovers right around .300. Personally, I never like to dismiss a hitter's stats based on a high BABIP, though. A lot of other factors can contribute to his success, including plate discipline, exit velocity and the ability to find gaps between the opposing defenders.

His 12.5 percent walk percentage is second on the Orioles behind only Chris Davis (14.9), a guy who teams seem to be doing everything they can to avoid. He's also shown a unique ability to lay off pitches outside of the strike zone, swinging at them just 23.8 percent of the time. The league average is 28.6 percent. When Kim commits to a pitch, he rarely misses it. His 84.2 percent contact rate is well above the league average (78.3). His zone contact percentage, 86.6, is right at the league average.

According to PitchF/X data, Kim has shown strong power when he connects against fastballs with an average exit velocity of 95.6 miles per hour. He has shown average power against breaking pitches (87.5 MPH) and above average against offspeed pitches (90.3 MPH). His low whiff percentage against breaking pitches (14 percent) is been one of the most impressive aspects of his approach at the plate.

Overall, he's a tough player to pitch to. If you keep the ball in the zone, Kim is likely to put it play. If you pitch around him, he'll take pitches and work a free pass. The league will find an adjustment to Kim's approach the more he plays, that's baseball, but finding his weakness in my research proved a bit of a challenge. Kim's 23 percent whiff/swing on changeups is his highest against any pitch. I would expect for him to see a few more of those pitches as the season progresses.

While the numbers will level out and normalize a bit, Kim has been a great complement to the power in the Orioles offense. We knew that the O's lineup would mash and go through cold streaks with record high strikeout totals, but having a player consistently get on base is something that could level out the swoons. In 19 games, that's exactly what Kim has provided at the dish.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zach_wilt. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.