“What I felt while watching good pitchers was the first pitch.”
Samsung Lions pitcher Baek Jung-hyun, who challenged a perfect game on the 18th. After starting the mound and running a perfect march without giving up a walk or a hit until the 8th inning, he singled out the secret to his good pitching on this day as ‘controlling’ at once.
In fact 안전놀이터, Baek Jung-hyun did not perform well from his demonstration game to the first appearance of the opening game. His performance in the demonstration game this season was 11 innings and 8 runs, and in his first appearance, against Hanwha on the 6th, he scored 5 runs in 2 innings. Samsung coach Park Jin-man even sent a warning message, saying, “If you throw like you are now, you cannot be called a fourth starter.”
Then he rebounded with 5 innings and 1 run against SSG on the 12th, and finally harvested his first win of the season with 8 innings and 2 runs against Kiwoom on the 16th.
After the game, Baek Jung-hyun said, “I kept trying to find the cause” of his last time sluggishness. In the end, the answer I found was none other than ‘Jegu’.
Baek Jeong-hyeon said, “I looked back on the game when it was good, and I looked at how good pitchers threw and studied them. I think I tried a lot of changes in this and that,” he revealed. What good pitchers have in common, he found, is that they have a good command to put the ball where they want.
On the 12th, Hanwha pitcher Moon Dong-ju threw a light-speed ball (160.1 km) exceeding 160 km per hour for the first time in domestic pitching theory. In addition, young pitchers such as Ahn Woo-jin can easily throw the ball at 150 km/h.
There is a big difference from Baek Jung-hyun’s fastest ball speed (138 km/h) recorded on the 16th. It wasn’t that Baek Jung-hyeon wasn’t conscious of the restraint. He said, “Because I was conscious of speed, I tried to throw it with power, but as a result, the purpose (target) of the ball was lost.”
Baek Jung-hyun immediately gave up his desire for redemption. Instead, he started hitting batters with elaborate pitches. He explained, “I practiced to catch the target, and I threw it in connection (what I practiced) during the game, and luckily it seems to have led to good results.”
On this day, Baek Jeong-hyun continued his perfect streak with a sharp ball that crossed the opponent’s border line (strike zone) even with low speed.
Baek Jeong-hyeon’s good pitching must have come as a great realization to Kiwoom pitcher Jae-young Jang, who was competing against him as a starter. Jang Jae-young walked a lot from the first inning that day, giving up 5 walks in 2.1 innings. He threw 49 fastballs and recorded an average speed of 150km per hour, but it was the realization that he could deal with batters with a 130km per hour ball rather than a fastball.