139km KIA left-hander's charm
Tags: 토토사이트
Published: 2024-04-26 05:13:05

When the KIA Tigers nominated Choongam High School Yoon Young-chul (20) as the second choice in the first round of the 2023 KBO rookie draft, there were as many concerns as expected.


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The strength is that he has high level of completion due to his excellent ball control and ability to run a game despite his young age. However, even considering that he is a left-hander, many said he was disappointed with his low speed of ball speed, which is 144 kilometers per hour and 140 kilometers on average, making him the second in the entire first round.

Kia has boldly entrusted Yoon with the rotation of starting pitcher since the first year of its debut. Despite his stellar performance in the early days of this season, many were skeptical that he would go down someday, as he is a rookie with a high school diploma who is not familiar with 144 games in full season. However, Yoon was brave enough to complete the entire season with eight wins and seven losses in 25 games with a 4.04 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 122 ⅔ innings.

It is not easy to show expectations on a professional stage. Moreover, it is hard to have hope on a professional stage if the speed limit is below the league average (143 kilometers per hour). Lee Dong-geol (41), a bullpen coach for the KIA Tigers this season, was one of the outsiders who found Yoon interesting. After coming here and experiencing it in person, Yoon was a player who made his imagination a reality. He did not look like a 20-year-old rookie for high school graduates.

"(Yoon) Young-cheol has a really good performance for his age. He knows how to deal with batters. He is very good at setting up what kind of ball combination he will take and what kind of ball he will let batters hit. The more I looked at him, the more I could see why he was a first-round player and was able to be in the starting rotation from his first year as a professional player," said Lee Dong-geol, coach of Kiwoom in Gocheok on Sunday.

A case in point was the process of using the cutter, which was learned at the U.S. Drive-Line Baseball Center in January this year. The Drive-Line Baseball Center aims to provide an optimized solution to a player by checking his current physical condition and skills such as speed, vertical movement, and pitching mechanism through accurate measurements.

There, Yoon realized that his slider was close to a cutter. Through some grip changes, he established the existing slider as a cutter, and learned a new slider with a large horizontal movement that was slightly less than the sweeper, so he practiced consistently from January. There was also a slight increase in speed as he put his weight on the ball in the process. According to Statiz, a Korean baseball statistics site, the average speed of fastballs in 2023 rose from 137.6 km per hour to 138.4 km in 2024.

"Cutter was actually a type of pitching that I wanted to throw since high school, but practice has not gone well," Yoon said. "Then, I learned it at the driving line in the U.S. this year and threw it from the spring camp and practice matches. That's great," he said.

Cutter, who has learned that way, is making brilliant efforts to control the ball count in his favor at the beginning with a batting average of 0.235 at the end of the game on Monday. He is boldly throwing it to the top of the strike zone, doubling the power of sliders (hitting ratio of 0.087) and change-ups (hitting ratio of 0.250) used at the bottom. In addition to the diversified repertoire, pitchers repeatedly swing and miss even slow balls up to 130 kilometers per hour. He has become a more difficult pitcher to hitters as he has shown the use of automatic ball judgment system (ABS) in recent years.

"I know ABS strike zone (now) is generous to high balls, but I don't really care. I just pass it thinking, 'You're giving me a strike from this high,'" Yoon said. "A high ball is not as easy to throw as people think. If it goes in properly, it is a very good ball (which can bring out a swing of the fence), but if it is a little high, it is the hardest ball to throw because it is visible to the batter and if it is low, it is in the middle. That is why they check the ratio of fastballs to breaking balls, and ball-strike. They don't even check the speed of the ball separately. If I throw too many breaking balls, I am using my fastballs a little more because it is not a breaking ball."

A case in point is his second at-bat in the bottom of the third inning against Lee Yong-kyu in the game against Kiwoom in Gocheok on Monday, and his third at-bat in the bottom of the fifth inning. Yoon faced a timely hit after throwing a curve ball that fell low while competing with one out and second base in the bottom of the third inning. However, when facing each other again with one out and first base in the bottom of the fifth inning, he caught a two strike with his fastball from the beginning, gave him an option through a changeup, and threw a fastball at 140 kilometers per hour at the same location where he was timely hit in the bottom of the third inning to bring about a swing and miss.
Coach Lee Dong-geol gave a higher evaluation to Yoon Young-cheol's bold mindset, which uses pitches that he learned in practice, than his ability to acquire pitches. Lee said, "I think I realized what kind of count the cutter should use with which balls. I think I gained confidence because it led to good results."

At the same time, he said, "A player's sense of excellence is outstanding, but I think he has more courage to choose the pitches he learned. No matter how good the grip is learned and how good the pitch is, whether I can choose on the mound is another matter. There is something next when you have the courage to throw new pitches that you are not familiar with on the mound. I think that courage is what Yoon has."

As a professional player, he is not as good as a professional player. In the match against SSG in Incheon on Wednesday, Yoon was shaken up by allowing five runs in the second inning. Usually, young pitchers would have been more shaken up at the batter-friendly Munhak Stadium, but he pitched four scoreless innings afterwards, leading a close game. This was what manager Lee Bum-ho wanted from foreign pitchers.

"I think it's a result theory. I tried to hold out from the point that the fielder gave me five points. I tried to take the inning as long as I could, and the defense helped me a lot," Yoon said. "I know Munhak is a stadium that has a lot of long hitters, but I don't think we should blame the stadium." The disadvantage is equally burdensome not only for me but also for the opposing pitcher. The more I do that, the more I try to focus and throw balls with certainty even if I get a ball on the mound."
His love for fans is as good as any veteran.

BY: **[토토사이트](https://edwardsrailcar.com)**