Choosing Center Field
"……What was that velocity just now?"
At Manager Lee Man-jae's question, pitching coach Yoo Young-cheol checked the radar gun beside him and answered with a burst of admiration.
"Ha! Ninety-one."
"Ninety-one? Was Young-joon ever the type to have his velocity cranked up from the start of the season?"
"The raw speed was always there. On a good day he can push it into the mid-nineties even early in the year. The stuff's good too — he's got a ball he can just blow by hitters on power alone — but he's so passive that he's one of those pitchers whose results never show up."
Lee Man-jae took the explanation in without a word, watching Baek Young-joon on the mound as the kid poured everything he had into each pitch.
"Let's see a slider."
The pitching coach flashed a sign to the catcher at once, and it reached Young-joon through the PitchCom. Young-joon let out a small breath — habit more than thought — and threw the slider. From the arm slot all the way to the release point, the delivery was nearly impossible for a hitter to tell apart from the fastball, and that was enough to put a look of satisfaction on Lee Man-jae's face.
Whoosh—pop!
The slider broke away, up and out, and the batter swung through it for the strikeout. Young-joon clenched a fist and celebrated without a sound. Lee nodded, twice.
"At this level, he's got a real chance to compete for a rotation spot."
"His ball is definitely good today. Unlike before, you can feel the strength in it — he's throwing with confidence."
"That's how a pitcher ought to look."
It was the moment Lee Man-jae started keeping a real eye on Baek Young-joon.
From then on Young-joon stayed aggressive against the hitters. His fastball touched ninety-three, and they flailed at empty air; even when someone managed to put the ball in play, the outfield caught all of it and put still more run behind his pitching. He came down off the mound after three innings of two hits, two walks, four strikeouts, and not a single run.
Jake Barnett, the one they'd expected so much from, went the other way. He struck out six in two and a third, but he had to leave after giving up two runs. Even so, he left a very strong impression on Lee Man-jae.
"Feels like we picked the imports right this time, doesn't it?"
"Jake Barnett's two-seamer is genuinely nasty. Throw nothing but the ball he showed today, and there won't be many hitters in this league who can square him up."
"And one of those not-so-many hitters is Do Kang-hyun."
"……"
For a moment Yoo Young-cheol had nothing to say. Lee let out a short laugh at the look on his face.
In his first at-bat Kang-hyun had turned Barnett's perfect two-seamer into a shot off the fence and coasted into second. It was such a well-struck ball that it was a shame it wasn't a home run — but the fact that even a relatively short fence had held it in only meant Barnett's stuff was that good. From where Lee sat, it had been a thoroughly satisfying duel between bat and arm.
"The homer Kang-hyun hit his second time up was an obvious mistake from Jake Barnett. If that ball hadn't leaked over the middle……"
"How many pro hitters do you figure can take a mistake pitch and not miss it — put it over the fence? In the end that's possible because the talent's there."
"Yes, well. That's true enough."
Their second meeting. Stung by a double so loud he could be grateful it hadn't been a homer, Jake Barnett came into the rematch with his mind made up. A former major leaguer with his pride nicked, he attacked even harder than the first time — violently, almost recklessly, carving at the corners.
From pitch one he worked Kang-hyun inside, close enough to hit him: a warning. Kang-hyun didn't give an inch. That unyielding stance only wound Barnett tighter, and an excited pitcher's fingertips eventually manufactured the mistake. A two-seamer bent back over the heart of the zone, and Kang-hyun didn't miss it. He turned on it with a full swing and everything he had.
At the moment of contact, everyone knew. The ball cleared the left-field wall with room to spare, and up on the mound Jake Barnett ripped loose a savage yell with all his might — second only to Young-joon.
"Jake Barnett's biggest worry was that he can't control his emotions, wasn't it?"
"He gets fired up easy. Every so often he wrecks his own game."
"That I really don't like."
Lee Man-jae frowned behind his sunglasses. It was the sort of thing you ran into all the time with foreign imports; to some degree, you simply had to live with it.
"Skipper, should we leave Kang-hyun in?"
Hitting coach Park Seong-hoo asked it carefully. This was an intrasquad, and everyone was supposed to get a fair look, so the suggestion underneath was plain enough: Kang-hyun had already played a full game last time, and maybe today they ought to sit him.
"Weren't we the ones saying we'd give him every chance we can?"
"……Do we really need to see any more today?"
Two-for-two, a home run, and a stolen base at third. Even Park Seong-hoo, the coach who had argued for maximizing Kang-hyun's opportunities, looked a little sheepish saying there was nothing left to watch. Through two intrasquads Do Kang-hyun had already put on a show — as a hitter, as a runner, as a defender — at a hundred percent, and then some. Lee looked at his hitting coach, then nodded.
"Pull him. We'll get another look next time."
"Yes, sir."
The second intrasquad ended, training resumed, and then came the third. In that one too, Do Kang-hyun went one-for-two with another time on base, proving that his feel at the plate was good — and that his eye for laying off a pitch was every bit as sharp.
"That ball was headed perfectly down the third-base line, sunbae. So close!"
The moment Kang-hyun came off the field, Baek Young-joon latched onto him and said it. Ever since the last intrasquad, Young-joon had been orbiting Kang-hyun's side to an almost burdensome degree.
"Don't you think the other hitters I've robbed of base hits feel about the same? Hearing 'so close' out of a junior who was whooping it up on the mound — that's pretty funny."
"Ah! Th-that's not what I—"
Kang-hyun tossed it off like a joke, then fixed his eyes on the field, on the Canadian import playing third.
In that at-bat, for the first time across three intrasquads, Do Kang-hyun had made an out. He'd opened the day with a hit and a stolen base, so the second time up the pitcher had thrown him nothing but chase pitches, plain as day. He couldn't swing at balls off the plate, and he took his walk.
In his last at-bat a pitch looked as if it might just nick the zone, jammed in on the hands, and he got greedy and swung. The ball screamed down the third-base line, and in the instant he was sure it was a hit, Clay Bryan — just joined to the club this season — made a picture-perfect play and a quick, accurate throw, and Kang-hyun had no choice but to be out.
They said the defense was good. Yeah. That was beautiful.
The web gem Clay Bryan had just turned was the kind even major leaguers didn't show very often. Last season the hot corner for the Phoenix had been such a crater that the fans themselves groaned it might as well have been an automatic door.
Nobody they tried satisfied them. Let the bat look halfway useful and the glove fell apart; let the glove look solid and the bat was a wet noodle. Inside the organization there was no obvious man for third, and none on the free-agent market either, so the general manager had decided early to fill the spot with a foreign position player.
That player was Clay Bryan. Across 121 major-league games he had hit .241 with four home runs, then injuries and a lost position battle pushed him down to the minors. The Phoenix offer arrived just as he was wearing thin on minor-league life. It tempted him. The deal got done.
"What do you make of him, sunbae?"
"Of what?"
"Clay Bryan. The defense is obviously good, but honestly I can't tell about the bat. I want your read."
"What would I know?"
"What are you saying! Honestly…… among Phoenix hitters, I think you're the best with the bat."
Afraid someone might hear, Young-joon whispered it very small, then kept glancing around like a meerkat in case the words had leaked anyway. Say a thing like that where anyone else could hear and they'd jump out of their skin — so why say it at all? To Kang-hyun, the young junior was simply cute.
"He made it all the way to the majors. He'll be fine, won't he? And don't go saying things you don't need to. Never mind you — I'm the one who'd catch all the grief for a line like that."
"Yes……"
Young-joon seemed to realize on his own that the remark could stir up needless trouble, and he answered with care. After that Kang-hyun sat with the kid stuck to his side, trading a word now and then as they watched the rest of the intrasquad.
When the third game ended, Kang-hyun went right back to grinding through the brutal workouts, pouring sweat, round and round like a hamster on a wheel. With one day left before their last day in Arizona, the fourth and final intrasquad was played.
Again he started as the leadoff hitter and the center fielder, and again he closed out the Arizona camp cleanly, with the kind of performance that planted a firm belief in the manager and the coaches.
February 20. With the first training camp in Arizona finished, they began preparing to leave for the second: Okinawa, Japan.
"All right. Let's lock in the final lineup."
Arrived in Okinawa, the manager and coaches of the Daejeon Phoenix gathered in one room. A practice game was already on the books for the day after next, the 24th, and Lee Man-jae couldn't help having his nerves a little up.
The opponent was the Chunichi Dragons' second team. It wasn't a closed scrimmage — some reporters would be allowed in — so one way or another it would become an article. However far people ranked Korean pro ball a notch below Japan's, Lee Man-jae was not a man who could swallow a loss to a farm club.
We can scrap for last place in our own league. We are not losing to a Japanese second team on top of it.
More than that, it was Korea against Japan. Lee had already set his jaw: he was going to beat the Chunichi Dragons' second team, no matter what. To do it, he had to run the best lineup the Daejeon Phoenix had.
"Center field…… we should still go with Sang-min, shouldn't we?"
At the bench coach's words, the hitting coach and the defense coach both looked like men swallowing what they wanted to say. Lee asked it lightly.
"Somebody got another opinion?"
Unlike the hesitant hitting coach, defense coach Jeong Tae-hoon opened his mouth with the look of a man past caring.
"Personally, I'd recommend Do Kang-hyun in center. Same story in the Arizona workouts — and you can't say Sang-min was better than Kang-hyun in the intrasquads, either. The only live action we've seen is those games, so there's some unease, I'll grant that. But it's a practice game. Feels like we can run him without nearly as much burden."
Jeong Tae-hoon had gotten it off his chest, plain and satisfying, and hitting coach Park Seong-hoo carefully added his own view.
"As for the bat, comparing Kang-hyun to Sang-min right now is meaningless. He's that far ahead. The only drawback is that he has no game experience, but the swing I've seen is technically sound enough to get hits even off unfamiliar Japanese pitching. And his condition, as I see it, is as good as it gets."
Lee Man-jae looked over at bench coach Kim Do-jin, as if to ask what he made of the two recommendations.
"I suggested Sang-min because of his experience against Japanese players, and because someone has to anchor the outfield. But I think Do Kang-hyun is a perfectly good choice too."
With even the bench coach saying so, Lee agreed at once. From the start he had wanted to start Kang-hyun himself; experience, and the politics inside the clubhouse, were what had him planning to bring the kid in around the fifth. But if the coaches were this favorable, there was no reason to leave Do Kang-hyun out of the starting lineup.
"And the batting order?"
"The order……"