Doosan Bears welcoming Zach Logue / Captured from Zach Logue's Instagram account

Over the past couple of seasons, left-hander Zach Logue has bounced between the majors and the minors. He made 14 appearances for the Oakland Athletics in 2022, three for the Detroit Tigers in 2023 and two for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2024. In between came several outings across Double-A and Triple-A, including 23 games for the Gwinnett Stripers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, in 2024.

For 2025, Logue has decided to take his talent to Korea, where he will be pitching for the Doosan Bears in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO). The 28-year-old is keen on making the most of his chance to prove his worth as a starting pitcher.

"I think it's a good opportunity for myself to really get a full sample size and show what I can do," Logue told Yonhap News Agency in a Zoom interview Thursday, speaking from his home in Louisville, Kentucky. "Whether it was performance based or just the opportunity not being there, I haven't been able to establish myself and really put a full body of work together. So I think it's a great opportunity against really good competition to put a full season's worth of tape out there essentially for my future, whether that be in the KBO or in Major League Baseball."

The Bears signed Logue for one year at $800,000 on Dec. 19, after terminating a deal with right-hander Thomas Hatch, whom they'd signed in November, over a failed physical.

The Bears had also signed another former big league pitcher, Cole Irvin, in November. Although the Bears said last month that they had been keeping an eye on Logue for three years, he wasn't their first choice this offseason.

"Obviously, I wish I was the team's first choice, but I think I can provide a lot of good innings and a lot of value for Doosan," Logue said. "So that's what I'm hoping to show this year."

To that end, Logue will try to build on the success he had in Triple-A last year. In 23 outings for the Stripers, including 12 starts, Logue went 5-6 with a 2.68 ERA, while striking out 86 batters in 90 2/3 innings. Logue also made one outing for the Dodgers' Triple-A team in Oklahoma City.

In those 24 games last year, Logue held right-handed batters to a .226 batting average, compared with a .245 mark against left-handed batters. In both 2022 and 2023, righties batted .331 against Logue, who throws from a three-quarter arm slot.

"I definitely had more success against righties this past season than I had in the year or two prior. And I think it was just kind of leaning into what locations work for me the best," he said. "With my fastball, I don't have a ton of vertical break or ride on it, but with the low slot, it plays up a little bit. We leaned into that, throwing that up in the zone and then just running all my stuff off of that, and then also really trying to be in the zone as much as possible, understanding that hitting is hard and the biggest advantage for me, not being a crazy power pitcher, is to be ahead in the count."

Logue also said the sweeper, a variation of the slider with a dramatic horizontal break, has become "something natural" to him thanks to his arm slot.

New Doosan Bears pitcher Zach Logue signs his contract with the Korea Baseball Organization club, in this photo provided by the Bears, Dec. 19, 2024. Yonhap

"That's definitely a big swing-and-miss pitch for me against lefties," he said. "And against righties, I found I had a lot of success last year just throwing it back door. A lot of times, I'll get a free strike just because it looks like a ball for a long time and then it ends up being a strike. And then I'll try to backfoot it a little bit with two strikes."

In Seoul, Logue will be reunited with his former Athletics teammate Cole Irvin, whom Logue credits with helping him in his first year in MLB.

The two left-handers will now try to take the Bears deeper into the postseason than last year, when they lost in the wild card round against the KT Wiz. To accomplish that, Logue said he will try to keep his ears and mind open when working with the Bears' staff for the first time this spring.

"I think a big part of it will be leaning into the coaching staff and the pitching coaches, especially early on, and just trying to get feedback on how they would attack different hitters, because it may be a little bit different to how we have thought about it before," Logue said. "Also, just trying not to do too much and trust your stuff. There's a reason why you've had success in the past. So trying to trust that and run with it, and not put too much pressure on yourself for each individual outing to be perfect, because I think that's when you can get a little tense and things can spiral maybe."

Logue said his goal for his first KBO season is "to make every start."

"Some of the value that I bring is throwing a lot of strikes and being efficient," he said. "'m hoping to make every start and go deep into games as much as possible. If I'm going deep, usually that means we're not giving up too many runs. And as a team, making a deep run in the playoffs. I think that would be a lot of fun. And with hopefully the help of the foreign players, we can make that happen." (Yonhap)