Twins reportedly win bidding for Korean slugger Byung-ho Park

The winner of the Byung-ho Park Sweepstakes has officially been revealed and the lucky bidder is the Minnesota Twins.

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports reported on Monday that the Twins submitted the winning bid of $12.85 million and earned the rights to negotiate with the power-hitting South Korean first baseman.

Minnesota will now have 30 days to exclusively broker an MLB contract with Park.

The 29-year-old Park is one of the finest sluggers that the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) has to offer, clubbing 53 home runs and 146 RBIs on a .343/.436/.714 slash line for the Nexen Heroes last season. A year before that, Park hit 52 home runs and 124 RBIs on .303/.433/.686 hitting splits.

A good parallel for Park is fellow Korean Jung-ho Kang, who put up similar numbers in his KBO career, worked out a four-year, $11 million deal with the Pirates last fall (after they posted a winning bid of $5 million), and turned out to be a quality Major Leaguer in his rookie season for Pittsburgh.

Park was a hot commodity with numerous MLB teams submitting competitive bids for the rights to negotiate with him, only to see the Twins pounce from seemingly out of nowhere and scoop up the talented righty.

The future certainly looks bright for the Twins, who surprised many last season by going 83-79 and contending for a Wild Card spot all the way up until October. Park and resident baseball-crusher Miguel Sano could very well be on their way to becoming this generation’s Bash Brothers for Minnesota, not to mention 21-year-old Byron Buxton dazzling in the outfield for many years to come.

The only question for the Twins after winning the exclusive negotiating rights to Park is what now becomes of that Joe Mauer dude.

Image via MLB on Twitter

H/T SB Nation