The Art of the Cut

Right after the game ended, Lee Won-taek roamed the dugout, hunting for drinking companions.

"Anyone up for a round in Sangmu District tonight!"

But the response from his teammates was lukewarm at best. It was hard to believe this was once a team that gathered for drinks almost every week.

When did it start, again?

If he had to guess, it probably began with Jin-mo.

"Sorry, man. Watching Kang Hyuk grind it out alone just makes me feel pathetic. My wife isn't thrilled about it either, so I'm cutting back on the drinking from now on."

"Ah. Got it."

At first, Won-taek hadn't thought much of it. Wasn't there someone declaring their quit-drinking resolution every single year, only to give up within the week?

He figured Jin-mo would be the same.

But somewhere along the line, one teammate stopped showing up to the drinking sessions. Then two. Then, before he knew it, he was the only one left at the table.

"Tch. Bastards, all of them."

Unable to find a single drinking buddy, he ended up calling a player he knew over on the Pumas instead.

At the bar they'd agreed to meet at, his friend raised an eyebrow.

"So you came alone?"

"Yeah. Everyone's too busy training to hang out with me these days."

"Well, I guess. The Hawks are on fire lately. Is it because Kang Hyuk's in the lineup?"

"That guy? That's only because I set the table as the leadoff hitter."

These days, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing Kang Hyuk's name. He was the hottest hitter in a KBO that was shattering attendance records week after week.

And yet, Won-taek felt no bitterness or jealousy toward him. Every single member of the team knew exactly how hard that kid worked.

Instead, the beer suddenly tasted sour in his mouth.

Come to think of it... when did I start drinking, anyway?

Probably when he was twenty-three.

Back then, unlike now, he'd been ahead of his peers. He'd taken first in batting average at the national high school tournament and walked away with the Lee Young-min Batting Award. While the rest of his draft class was still lost in the Futures League, he'd stepped onto a first-team field in his very first year as a pro — a certified player to watch.

Granted, that was partly because the Hawks' starting lineup was paper-thin at the time.

But as the years went by, the picture reversed. While his classmates kept developing and adding extra-base power to their games, he stayed exactly where he was.

A slap hitter with decent on-base numbers — that was all he'd become.

If he couldn't be the best, then he'd minimize the effort. That was the unspoken deal he'd made with himself, and the drinking days had piled up from around that time.

Deep down, he'd told himself: I can still start in the first team even if I drink. I've got enough talent to survive in the pros without working as hard as everyone else.

He knew exactly how pathetic that rationalization was. And he couldn't stop anyway — because it was the most comfortable path.

But ever since Kang Hyuk arrived, the atmosphere around the team had changed. The pitchers hovered around him, desperate to glean even one thing they could steal. Young players like Kim Hyeong-jun had all but moved into the training facility to work out alongside him. And maybe infected by that energy, the rest of the roster was quietly investing more and more hours ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into training too.

The moment that thought crystallized, Lee Won-taek stared blankly at the glass he'd been about to drain.

"What's wrong? Not drinking?"

"...It's not going down tonight. Rain check?"

Because he'd just realized, with absolute clarity, that he stood at a crossroads of his own.

"...So you're asking me to teach you how to cut?"

"Yep. Watching you do it last time looked like fun."

This guy is not a normal human being either.

Any ordinary player would study how to raise his batting average or fine-tune his swing mechanics. But learning to cut foul on purpose?

His disbelief must have shown on his face, because his senior launched into a stream of excuses.

"Hey, come on. I've got pro-level seasoning under my belt. I know how to read my own game objectively. Pitch recognition, contact, plus speed — those are my tools. A slap hitter trying to bulk up out of nowhere? That's just begging for injuries. No upside."

"That's true."

"...It pisses me off more when you agree."

Kang Hyuk had wrestled with a similar question himself. Why did home runs keep multiplying in Major League Baseball while Korean baseball still clung to a culture that worshipped batting average?

A tangle of reasons, really — but the conclusion he'd landed on was the limitation of the talent pool itself. Unlike the MLB, brimming with power prospects at every level, Korea simply lacked elite sluggers.

The reason Kang Hyuk himself batted third was obvious enough: even the strongest number-two hitter becomes easy prey for a pitcher when the lineup behind him can't hurt anyone.

And so, in the KBO, table-setters like Won-taek were still valued commodities.

Even as Kang Hyuk mulled this over, his senior wouldn't stop talking.

"Besides, my image is better than some lumbering slugger's. How should I put it... a mastermind? You know, a high-IQ baseball player?"

"A mastermind? Weren't you the Terror Mouth?"

"That's just Jin-mo slandering me."

Not exactly — you're famous for it among the fans, too.

A stray thought crossed Kang Hyuk's mind: this man probably didn't attend drinking gatherings because he loved alcohol. He went because he loved to talk.

"So? Is there some trick to cutting well?"

"That's... kind of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the wrong question to ask. There's no real secret technique to it, exactly?"

The reason Kang Hyuk cut was simple. When he faced a pitcher he'd never seen before, or judged that a quality swing wasn't happening right now, he spoiled pitches foul to manufacture the best possible chance later.

"In a way, it's a form of respect for the opposing pitcher."

"That's respect?"

"Of course. It means his stuff is good enough that I can't hit it."

His senior stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

"You're not just doing it to mess with the pitcher's head?"

"If I can get a hit, I hit and get on base. That's the rule."

The cut was merely a means to the end of a base hit. It had never once been the goal itself. The person chasing the cut for its own sake was the strange one here.

"So basically it's hard. Tch..."

"Hold on."

Kang Hyuk grabbed his senior's shoulder as he turned to leave.

"How about we take a look at your stance first?"

For all the nonsense that came out of the man's mouth, he wasn't a bad person. His connections were wide — he'd introduced Kang Hyuk to plenty of people, and it was this guy who'd pointed him to the Hawaiian pizza place, after all.

And he's got more than enough talent for cutting, as it happens.

The senior called himself a slap hitter all day long, but he hadn't become the Hawks' permanent leadoff man for nothing. His pitch recognition was fundamentally excellent, and so was his contact. It was worth a try.

When the two of them arrived at the batting cages, Kang Hyuk delivered a speech of his own.

"First — the whole point of the cut is getting on base."

Sabermetric purists hold that if a batter can force a pitcher to throw ten or more pitches, he wins the at-bat even if he strikes out. The faster you knock a starter out of the game, the higher the odds the rest of the lineup gets a fat pitch to feast on.

But ten was no small number. It meant squeezing five or more extra pitches even out of a full-count battle.

"But if you just make him throw seven or more, doesn't that shake his confidence already?"

"It does. But sabermetrics only reads the numbers. It doesn't account for what's going on in a player's head."

"That's exactly why I want to learn the cut."

His senior flashed a grin that was irritating in its smugness.

"To piss off the opposing pitcher."

"...Let's start with your swing, then."

Mild disappointment at the Sportsmanship violation aside, Kang Hyuk threw himself into the work.

Whoosh—

The senior's swing form was slightly different from the barrel-contact style sweeping baseball lately — but it was clean, and it was smooth. It wasn't wrong; it belonged to a different territory altogether, which made it awkward terrain for Kang Hyuk to meddle with.

This really might be tough...

Just as he was about to give in to discouragement, he spotted something strange in the senior's grip.

"Hyung-nim."

"Hm?"

"Do you usually choke up this far even when the count's against you?"

It varied from hitter to hitter, but the conventional approach when cutting was to shorten up on the grip. And yet there was his senior, still choking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the knob of the bat.

"Shortening up makes contact easier, doesn't it?"

"Sure, but without that knob at the end bracing the bat, my wrists won't stay locked. It feels off."

"Then there's always the tape-wrapping trick."

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"It looks terrible! Sticking a bunch of junk all over a perfectly good bat?"

"......"

Kang Hyuk had suspected as much back when the man called himself a mastermind. This guy was, without question, obsessed with a very strange kind of cool.

So Kang Hyuk enforced the policy by force.

"Hand over the bat."

"Hey, hey! That's my favorite one!"

"You can hold it right about here, right?"

Having produced a roll of athletic tape, Kang Hyuk wrapped an entire tube's worth around the handle. When the senior took some practice swings, the padding bracing the lower part of his lead hand actually made the motion feel substantially more stable.

"Try practicing with it like that."

"Ugh. My dignity..."

Grumbling all the while, the senior ran through his swings — and after tilting his head a few times, apparently decided the feel wasn't half bad. He stepped into the cage with the tape still on.

"One more thing. When I cut, I treat my strike zone as wider than the ABS zone."

"Wider than ABS?"

"Right. When the count's piling up against you, the odds are high you'll see borderline pitches — and those on the edge, you have to spoil too."

The shrinking ranks of cutters had something to do with the ABS rollout, as well. In the old days, when the umpires' phantom zones were impossible to predict, batters had to spoil anything remotely close. But once ABS arrived, it became more efficient to simply hunt for a hit before the count could spiral.

The senior, though, seemed already too deep into the cutting rabbit hole to care.

"Under the assumption that we're facing power pitchers, I'll set the pitching machine to 155 kilometers an hour. It'll carry over to real games."

"Okay."

"The key is not squaring the ball up. Be extra careful about popping anything up."

And so the cutting drills began.

Was this what they meant by a gifted player being different? Maybe it was because he was focused on the cut rather than the base hit, but the senior grew comfortable with it fast. And perhaps because he'd shortened his grip, his contact looked even better than usual.

This might actually work out better than I thought.

If the senior could work his way on base by cutting in his first plate appearance — and then a slugger like Adam strode to the plate behind him? Any pitcher would waver, in both mentality and game plan.

"Now let's practice against breaking balls. They drop low, so think about pushing them toward the foul lines on either side—"

Drawn in by the unexpected possibilities, Kang Hyuk ended up spending the better part of a week running morning batting sessions with his senior.

The next series brought the Daegu Kingdoms to the Hawks' home park. Both teams handed the ball to their number-two foreign starters.

Seated in the Kingdoms dugout, Han Jiseong studied the opposing bench with narrowed eyes. Kang Hyuk — the man who had made him feel a wall between them — was right there.

And so the game began.

Tak—

"Foul!"

The first hint that something unusual was unfolding came when Lee Won-taek started cutting from the fourth pitch of the game.

Tak—

"Foul!"

Tak—

"Foul!"

Whoosh—

The next at-bat.

Tak—

"Foul!"

The moment Han Jiseong saw Kang Hyuk cutting in exactly the same fashion, he squeezed his eyes shut.

Because tomorrow, it would be his job to face that lineup.