Chapter 282 – Episode 280. Asian Games Finals. (1)
Perfect!
“Second!”
“Okay!”
The hit ball rolled slowly and came in front of me. I lightly lifted the ball with my glove and threw it to first base.
“Nice!”
“Space! It was good!”
Three outs with this. Taiwan’s attack in the top of the first inning ended in a three-way retreat.
“Wooju, how is it?”
“Nothing much?”
“This bastard, he shared a room with Ji Maeng-ho, and they look alike.”
“Hey, what does it look like?”
“Space, I can hear everything.”
“Anyway, if you give up just one run, I’ll pitch a complete 9-inning shutout.”
Although there were some words in the middle that were a bit tearful, Jang Woo-joo’s confidence was evident when he was seen talking to Lee Yong-gi.
‘Well, in Taiwan, I saw these kids a few days ago, so there’s no way they’ll grow up all of a sudden. ‘Is the problem Chen Jianhaon?’
As I entered the dugout and glanced at the Taiwanese kids, I saw Taiwanese starting pitcher Chen Jianhao walking in with a confident expression.
‘Baby, your expression is wolkeul. ‘If anyone sees him, he’ll think he’s as good as Otani.’
What can I say about this guy’s expression? I wanted to bother you. Would you like to see that confident expression shattered? And it was also my hobby to destroy pitchers who made that kind of expression.
“Hey, hey. That bastard, look at his face. I’m in major league. Can you touch my ball? Isn’t this the look?”
“What are you talking about?”
I explained my feelings to Wonho, who was sitting on the bench, but the guy had a look on his face that didn’t understand at all.
“No, just look at your face. “Isn’t that unlucky?”
“… That’s unlucky. This is an expression I’ve seen before…”
“Where?”
“… Ah! “You look exactly like that when you stand at bat.”
“Just go away.”
“I was sitting first and then Ji came.”
I ignored Wonho, who was talking nonsense, and focused on the match between No. 1 batters Kim Dong-jin and Chen Jianhao. Chen Jianhao, with a confident expression on his face, confidently hit the ball into the strike zone from the first pitch.
“Strike!”
“… Is the ball good?”
I don’t know what was put on the catcher’s mitt, but the sound of the ball hitting the mitt was definitely different from the sounds I’ve heard these days. After all, even if he’s a dick, a major-leaguer is a major-leaguer, right?
Perfect!
Kim Dong-jin hit Chen Jianhao’s second pitch, and the batted ball did not leave the infield and was caught by the second baseman.
“Kabi.”
“It was a waste.”
After the seniors’ words of comfort, I approached Kim Dong-jin.
“Hey, Dongjin.”
“Huh?”
“How is the ball?”
“Are you doing something? 147 fastballs? It was like this, but it felt a little full?”
“Oh, that feeling?”
“Uh. And Deception is good. It will definitely be difficult for left-handed hitters.”
Deception is good, and fastball performance looks better than velocity, right? He also has good ball control, and his main pitches are forkball and slider. I heard that the changeup is sometimes used for right-handed hitters…
‘… It must be fun for the first time in a long time.’
Since he is definitely a major-leaguer, I thought it would help him get a feel for it before returning to Korea. So far, I’ve had a bit of trouble dealing with very weak pitchers. Taiwan’s last starting pitcher wasn’t as good as expected.
Perfect!
While we were thinking about this and that, second batter Kim Hwan-young retired with an infield grounder, and Joo Seung-cheol succeeded in sending the ball to the outfield for the first time, but it was caught by the outfielder, ending our offense in the bottom of the first inning.
“Hyung, how was it?”
Although I listened to Kim Dong-jin, I also needed to hear the opinion of Joo Seung-cheol, a fellow right-handed hitter, so I took a moment before changing innings to ask Joo Seung-cheol a question.
“Do you feel like you’re a major-leaguer? But it wasn’t to the point where I couldn’t play. If I hadn’t been fooled by the changeup, I would have passed on it. Under… Hey, how do you classify changeups like that?”
“It’s just slow. “You see and hit.”
“Seungcheol, don’t ask that bastard. Because they don’t tell me anything.”
“Courage Haeng, you are ugly.”
“Seungcheol, did you see it? “This bastard is going out to his senior now.”
“Brother, stop harassing the youngest. Meng Tiger’s head will fall out.”
“So, what do you think? Is there anything different from the video?”
“It’s similar? The position is also powerful.”
“Sweet, this must be difficult. Then, I only trust you, Meng Ho.”
“Yep. Please leave it to me.”
Lee Yong-gi intervened in the middle and talked with the right-handed hitters, and then went into the field to play defense in the top of the second inning.
“Strike! Out!”
“Left!”
“Base on balls!”
“Strike! Out!”
Starting pitcher Jang Woo-joo put one man on base, but the bottom of the second inning came as he allowed no runs.
“Meng Hao! Please!”
“Let’s show them a taste of Korean Stanton!”
“Hey, since he’s a second baseman, he’s R-tubeji. Let’s go, Altuve!”
“Isn’t Altuve a dwarf?”
“There’s no need to let this bastard go.”
My first at-bat with great expectations from my teammates.
“Strike!”
Chen Jianhao must have been confident in his control of the ball and hit the out-low course accurately from the first pitch.
“Sweet, I don’t think it’s a strike?”
Although the decision was a bit ambiguous, it was not strange even if a strike was called, so I remembered the referee’s strike zone and prepared for the next ball.
‘Even if I hit it anyway, it wouldn’t have been a good ball. But the position is good. Mr. Rossby, what about the next ball?’
‘It’s a forkball.’
‘Forkball? I’ll just have to keep an eye on it.’
Usually, a forkball is a ball that causes the batter to swing and miss. Then, since you don’t want to be hit by a blind bat, it was standard practice to throw low to a place where the batter couldn’t hit. Moreover, in a one-strike situation, the ball count was advantageous, so there was no way it could have been put into the strike zone.
“Strike!”
… I thought so, but Chen Jianhao threw the forkball into the strike zone. The moment I realized that the destination was inside the strike zone, I had no choice but to watch the ball because if I had swung the bat, I could have hit a bad hit.
‘Is this because he is a Major Leaguer? ‘It’s fun.’
‘It’s a slider.’
‘Okay.’
The count is already two strikes. I waited for his ball with the thought that I would hit it when a similar ball came,
Perfect!
I simply kicked the guy’s slider flying toward the outside borderline from the outside.
‘The slider is around mid 130’s? It’s not a ball that can’t be cleared.’
The only pitch I haven’t seen anymore is the changeup. But if my analysis was done, I wouldn’t throw a changeup. As he filtered out balls that were balls and kicked away balls that came inside, he threw the 7th ball and the count reached full count.
‘It’s not easy. It looks like he doesn’t throw the changeup until the end.’
‘It’s a forkball.’
‘Forkball? Okay, should I throw it into the strike zone like before? Or with a ball like the fifth ball? But since they don’t want to give me a walk, I think they’ll throw me into the zone… I thought he was aiming for that, so I pulled the bat out of the zone… ?’
‘Hey.’
‘Yes?’
‘Just look and hit. ‘You brat.’
‘… ‘Yes.’
It was a problem that I couldn’t find an answer to even if I thought about it, so I decided to just look at it like Rossby said. And Chen Jianhao’s forkball flew in.
Ta – yep!
I raised the pitch of the guy who was on the ambiguous border between a strike and a ball. The batted ball rose high and flew toward left field. Because his touch was a bit vague, he threw the bat and quickly started running to first base. When he stepped on first base, applause and Chinese were heard.
“Oh, fuck.”
The result was a fly out to left field. When I looked at the left fielder’s position, I saw that he caught my ball within a few meters of the fence.
“Hey, that doesn’t go over. “How is it difficult?”
“It’s not that difficult, but the referee is being a bit lenient on the outside, isn’t he? When I first got the strike, I felt a little twisted as I cleared the outside.”
“Okay? Check outside.”
“Oh, and the forkball is also placed in the zone, so be careful.”
“Okay.”
I told the next batter, Lee Yong-gi, about what I felt while dealing with him and walked to the dugout.
‘Sweet, I gave the first two strikes too easily. That’s why I was taken away.’
“Meng Hao, you lost a lot of balls.”
“Ha, I should have passed it on, sorry.”
“It’s okay, dude. “It’s still episode 2.”
As the hitting coach said, there are still two innings. There were at least two matches left.
‘See you later. ‘You brat.’
I started watching him pitch, hoping for the next time.
*
[Now in the bottom of the 4th inning, it’s South Korea’s attack. The 2023 Asian Games baseball final continues with a tight 0-0 score! In the bottom of the 4th inning, the leadoff hitter is Kim Hwan-young of the Shilla Triggers.]
[Hey, Zhang Wuju and Chen Jianhao. The two players’ strong pitching stands out. But now that the batting lineup has come full circle, we have to start attacking, right?]
[Actually, it’s quite difficult to attack a pitcher you’ve never met before, isn’t it?]
[You’re right. No matter how much you watch it on video, standing at bat and watching the pitch in person is a different matter. That’s why hitters have a hard time when they first meet a pitcher. In addition, Chen Jianhao is a player who is in the starting rotation in the major league, so it will definitely be difficult. However, there was a walk in the last inning, and there was one turn, so we can look forward to this inning.]
[I wish I could get on base…]
[You have to trust the players. Hwanyoung Kim, Seungcheol Joo, Maengho Ji. With this batting order, you can take the starting position in any team in the KBA League. Maybe this inning will be different.]
The final match between Korea and Taiwan was intense, as expected from a final match. The starting pitchers of both teams each put one batter on base. Both players walked, so no batter had yet reached base with a hit.
Taiwan’s batters were not able to attack Zhang Wu-ju’s fastball that was around 100 mph, and South Korea’s batters were being hit by the veteran Chen Jianhao’s pitches. However, Chen Jianhao has more pitches.
“Anyway, if you go down to Jianhao in Taiwan, you can assume that there is no one there. Let’s increase the number of pitches and come down. Okay?”
“I understand.”
The South Korean bench decided to take advantage of that point and lead the game in a direction that would increase Chen Jianhao’s number of pitches as much as possible.
[Now the second batter, Kim Hwan-young, comes to bat.]
And Kim Hwan-young, as a batsman with excellent strategy execution ability, faithfully implemented the bench’s strategy.
“Out!”
Kim Hwan-young faced 6 balls, and the next batter, Joo Seung-cheol, also held the bat slightly shorter to increase the number of pitches and faced Chen Jianhao.
“Foul!”
“Foul!”
“Out!”
After drawing two more fouls in a two-strike, two-ball situation, he made a grounder to shortstop against the seventh ball, and Joo Seung-cheol also retired from the batter’s box.
[I like our players! It would have been better if he got on base, but subtracting Chen Jianhao’s pitch count is meaningful enough, right? Chen Jianhao has already thrown 63 balls. Considering that he usually throws around 100 pitches, at this pace, I think it would be possible to get Chen Jianhao off the mound in the 6th inning.]
And after hitting an outfield fly with two outs, Ji Maeng-ho, who was gritting his teeth, came to bat.