Baseball's most well-traveled arm just added another stamp to the passport. Austin Voth is headed to the KBO after signing with the Samsung Lions, officially pulling him out of any conversation about MLB waiver claims or bullpen fill-ins for the rest of the summer.
KBO's Samsung Lions Sign Austin Voth t.co/N7yRyDz28N
For a guy who's bounced through basically every organization willing to give him a physical, this tracks. Voth's 2026 alone has been a demolition derby: released by the White Sox in late March, picked up by Toronto on a minor-league deal, called up for a single appearance on April 5th before getting DFA'd the very next day, then a stint with the Twins, and most recently a release from the Rangers after just one Triple-A start for Round Rock.
So naturally, the next chapter is 6,700 miles away. According to reporting out of Korea, the Lions are bringing Voth in as a short-term injury replacement for starter Ariel Jurado, who's dealing with shoulder inflammation, on a six-week deal reportedly worth $150,000. He's not new to pitching overseas either — Voth spent all of 2025 in Japan with the Chiba Lotte Marines, posting a 3.96 ERA over 125 innings, so this isn't some Hail Mary flyer. It's a guy who's found a groove pitching outside the States after nearly a decade bouncing around MLB rotations and bullpens.
It's a strange arc for a pitcher who was a semi-regular MLB starter as recently as a few years ago, carrying a career line of 17-20 with a 4.84 ERA across parts of 8 big league seasons. But that's the reality of the modern fringe-rotation arm — once you're bouncing through DFAs and minor-league releases across multiple organizations in the same calendar year, the KBO and NPB start looking less like a fallback and more like the more stable gig. Voth gets a defined role, a real rotation spot, and presumably a lot less waiver-wire uncertainty than what Texas, Toronto, Minnesota and Chicago were offering him.
Whether this turns into a longer KBO stay or just a six-week bridge back to affiliated ball is the thing to watch. Jurado's shoulder timeline will dictate how long Voth actually sticks in Daegu, but for now, the Lions — currently sitting atop the KBO — just added a former big leaguer with swing-and-miss stuff on a short-term rental basis. That's a low-risk, potentially high-reward move for a first-place club trying to hold serve through the summer.