In the Major League as well as the KBO League, the prevailing opinion is that the record of wins and losses is an indicator that is difficult to directly evaluate a pitcher’s ability. Even if the starting pitcher pitches 9 scoreless innings, he cannot become a winning pitcher if his fellow hitters remain scoreless. Conversely, even if the starting pitcher loses a lot of runs and the pitching content is poor, if the other line succeeds in scoring more runs than that, it can become a winning pitcher.
In other words, a pitcher’s skill should not be evaluated based on a win-loss record, which is a variable that the pitcher cannot control and is highly dependent on whether or not he supports the other line. However, there are also voices that it is meaningful to analyze how a pitcher’s wins and losses relate to other detailed indicators. It is necessary to find out why the pitcher lost so many games and whether there was no fault of his own.
One of the pitchers with the most losses last year in the KBO League was Lim Ki-young, an underhand starting pitcher for the KIA Tigers, who recorded 13 losses along with Baek Jeong-hyeon (Samsung) and Choi Won-jun (Doosan). Lim Ki-young, who pitched 129.1 innings in 26 games, only won 4 games, winning more than three times as many games. When a starting pitcher comes to the mound, it is desirable for him to be responsible for wins and losses, but it is not desirable if there are too many losses.
Lim Ki-young’s ERA was 4.24, slightly higher than the league average of 4.06. His earned run average wasn’t outstanding, but he wasn’t sluggish enough to record the most losses. Quality starts (less than 3 earned runs in 6 or more innings) recorded 10 innings, which does not match with small wins and many losses. It can be inferred that Lim Ki-young was unlucky.
When Lim Ki-young started, the scoring support was only 3.09. It was less than 3.53 of Kim Min-woo (Hanwha), who had the least score support among 22 pitchers who filled 144 innings, the required number of innings, in the KBO League last year. The KIA batting line last year had a batting average of 0.272 (1st place), 113 homers (4th place), and an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.747 (1st place), leading the league in batting average and OPS, and was competitive. However, when Lim Ki-young took the mound, batters were exceptionally silent.
However, even in the detailed indicators of Lim Ki-young, regrettable points are noticeable. The OPS, which combines the on-base percentage and the slugging percentage메이저사이트, rose by nearly 0.5 from 0.712 in 2021 to 0.761 in 2022. His average strikeouts per nine innings dropped from 7.59 in 2021 to 5.71 last year.
On the other hand, the average home runs per 9 innings rose from 0.88 to 1.25. The number of strikeouts decreased and the number of home runs increased compared to the previous year. His 18 home runs were tied for third in the league. If a skilled pitcher like Lim Ki-young has many home runs, it will inevitably be difficult to manage the game. It is interpreted as the reason that the ball was thrown in a way that was good for the batter to hit at the decisive moment.
Coincidentally, Baek Jeong-hyeon took the first place with 22 home runs, and Choi Won-joon took second place with 21. Baek Jeong-hyeon, Choi Won-joon, and Lim Ki-young are jointly the pitchers with the most losses, so the correlation between home runs and most losses can be seen.
This year, the KIA has a high proportion of left-handed pitchers in the domestic starting lineup. If underhand Lim Ki-young passes the 5th selection competition with rookie left-handed pitcher Yoon Young-cheol and settles into the rotation, the KIA starting lineup will be able to secure diversity. It is noteworthy whether Lim Ki-young will overcome last year’s disappointment and achieve the first 10 wins this year and take the lead in KIA’s fall baseball for the second consecutive year.