FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The drive time from Kwang-Hyun Kim’s home in Incheon, South Korea, to the country’s capital in Seoul is roughly 30 minutes if the roads are clear. But when traffic backs up, the commute can easily be extended upwards of two hours.

“For me,” Kim said through an interpreter after pitching three scoreless innings in the Cardinals’ 3-0 victory over the Twins at CenturyLink Sports Complex on Monday afternoon, “if it’s driving more than two hours, it’s quite a long time.”

Imagine, then, how Kim must have felt when a brief bout with groin soreness altered his schedule so that he drew the starting assignment for this cross-state tilt against the Twins. South Korea’s relatively small size means travel in the Korean Baseball Organization is not especially taxing. But the quirks of the Grapefruit League calendar occasionally require the roughly three-hour drive above or below Lake Okeechobee.

For a newly indoctrinated import like Kim, who is in the middle of an increasingly interesting battle for a rotation spot, this rite of spring that is mundane for most Major Leaguers qualifies as an unusual adventure.

The baseball itself, though? Kim looked pretty comfortable with that. Facing a Minnesota lineup that very much resembled the one that set a Major League home run record last year -- and added Josh Donaldson, to boot -- Kim basically breezed. Though he was touched for a couple singles in his third inning of work, his outing was highlighted by swinging strikeouts he induced from Donaldson and Nelson Cruz, two of his four K’s on the day.

“I don’t really think about the fame,” he said of his opponents. “What I do is think about whether it’s a lefty or righty, whether it’s a contact hitter or slugger. Because if I think about the fame on the mound, I might not pitch as well, I might get nervous.”

Kim hasn’t shown nerves in posting a spring ERA that still stands at 0.00 after eight innings. But the Cards are running into an innings crunch as they evaluate their rotation options, and fellow rotation candidate Daniel Ponce de Leon successfully pitched around a pair of walks and a pair of hits in his five scoreless innings.

The groin issue caused Kim to miss a little bit of time, but, overall, he has made a very strong impression in his first stateside camp.

“He’s a good, strong competitor,” manager Mike Shildt said. “He looks like he’s going to be able to handle himself, regardless of the situation.”

Kim remains on a starter’s schedule for his next assignment against the Marlins on Saturday.

Reyes closes it out
Given how well the starting pitching candidates have fared in this camp and his lengthy injury history (he’s pitched just 67 1/3 professional innings over the last three years), it stands to reason that Alex Reyes’ best path to the big leagues right now would be in the bullpen. And that’s exactly the role he filled in Monday’s game, finishing the Twins off in the ninth in an inning that wasn’t totally clean but nonetheless impressive.

“You saw a guy uninhibited today,” Shildt said.

That’s a sight for sore eyes after all those years of rehab. Reyes gave up two singles in his inning of work and nibbled with his offspeed stuff quite a bit. But when he wanted to reach back and overpower the opposition with the fastball, he was able to do so.

“Right now, we’re just tickled he’s out there competing and being free and getting back to just being a pitcher again,” Shildt said.

Cards seek pitcher improvement -- at the plate
It is well-established that pitcher performance at the plate has a low ceiling. But that doesn’t mean National League teams should punt on improvement.

Last year, St. Louis was basically middle of the pack in the NL with a pitchers’ OPS of .333 per Stats, LLC (.162 on-base percentage and .171 slugging percentage). One goal in camp, with the organization’s increased emphasis on analytics, is improving on those numbers by helping the pitchers understand their strengths and weaknesses at the plate.

“The pitchers have their own specific routines based on what we’ve seen in the last year or so,” Shildt said. “Based on what they like swinging at, what they’re better swinging at. So we’ve gone through that whole process. We’ve treated them as hitters. We don’t have the sample size [that’s available for actual position players], but we have to work off of something. So we’re moving the needle with that and being more intentional about what their work looks like.”

Up next
The Cards continue their Fort Myers excursion with a date against the Red Sox at JetBlue Park. Jack Flaherty, in line for the Opening Day assignment, will make the 1:05 p.m. ET start. The game can be streamed on Gameday Audio and an exclusive team webcast.