The 'folk ball master' who went through all the prenatal events is united...Changed S Zone, A Welcome Gift for Lotte
The 'folk ball master' who went through all the prenatal events is united...Changed S Zone, A Welcome Gift for Lotte
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The Lotte Giants are famous for being a team with many "folk ball masters." Will the strike zone, which will change in 2025, be a good thing for Lotte.
When did Lotte start to be called the "sacred place for forkball"? The baseball community sees 2009 when Cho Jung-hoon (current coach of Masan Yongmago) won the title of the most wins.
Cho's 2009 was a drama itself. Cho was a promising player who was able to catch up until 2008. He pitched as a substitute and won a shutout, and joined the starting lineup in the second half of the year, boasting potential of 5 wins and 3 losses and an earned run average of 3.15.
In the following year, Cho became a completely different pitcher. He started 27 games and won 14 wins, 9 losses and 4.05 ERA, becoming the most prolific pitcher (joint with Yoon Sung-hwan of Samsung and Lopez of Kia). Notably, his strikeouts (second and first place Ryu Hyun-jin), which jumped three times from 54 to 175, were impressive. He won the "Best Pitcher of Understanding" award and placed Lotte on the fall baseball league.
Since then, the number of pitchers throwing folk balls in the team has increased rapidly, and the tradition has continued to this day.
Park Se-woong, the "Glasses Ace," used to use folk balls a lot in the past, but recently he has increased the proportion of curves and sliders rather than folk balls. Still, Park uses folk balls at around 10 percent of every race.
A new powerhouse of folk balls has emerged since last year. Last year, Coach Cho Jung-hoon told Sports Chosun that Na Kyun-an seems to throw folk balls the best in the league this year. When he changed from catcher to a pitcher, Na drew attention due to his stable ball control and various breaking balls. Sliders accounted for a high proportion of sliders. By contrast, since he started the game in earnest last year, he has increased the ratio of folk balls to one to one, and has emerged as a quality starting pitcher.
However, the team has been mired in endless slump this year. With his fastballs falling and his control faltering, the team's ERA dropped to 8.51. It is poised to compete with Kim Jin-wook, Chung Hyun-soo, and Park Jin for the starting position next year.
Kim Sang-soo, Koo Seung-min and Kim Won-joong are all pitchers whose main weapon is folk ball. In particular, Koo Seung-min and Kim Won-joong threw more folk balls than fastballs this year. They are key veterans of Lotte's bullpen, which collapsed this year, but all three players showed lower performance than last year. In particular, Koo Seung-min's slump in the beginning of the season was serious, and closing pitcher Kim Won-joong also suffered a nightmare of failing to save for five consecutive games in July. 바카라사이트
After the season ended, Lotte acquired Jung from Doosan in a two-to-three trade that included Kim Min-seok. Jung is a pitcher with an overwhelming percentage of fastballs, but his first breaking ball also throws a forkball. The proportion of fastball to forkball pitchers in the Lotte bullpen has increased. Jung has also had a career-low year since he won the Rookie of the Year award in 2022.