The Bet (3)
Thwack!
"He doesn't even react to a pitch right down the middle! Strikeout!"
Han Doyoon came out aggressive from the top of the first against the Seiryuu, starting with their leadoff hitter.
"Just like Kwak Daehwi said, his body really is in great shape. You can feel it just from the power on that pitch."
"Wow… that surprised even me. Has he only been throwing fastballs so far?"
"Exactly as you said—all six pitches to the first batter were fastballs."
Doyoon's clean, decisive pitching lit up the chat instantly.
"Team Leader Cheon Sojin, what did you make of Han Doyoon's pitching just now?"
"When we acquired him, the thing we focused on most was that he has no fear putting his fastball in the zone. I think we're seeing that side of him right now."
Kwak Daehwi nodded slowly at Cheon Sojin's words.
"That's right. Another one of Doyoon's traits is that the second he senses a batter is even a little intimidated, he digs right into that."
Gang Seungwon nodded along.
"That's exactly the scene we're watching."
"Throwing nothing but fastballs means he already felt the batter was behind on timing."
The chat reacted to that as well.
Cheon Sojin added to Kwak Daehwi's point.
"That's why we saw him as a pitcher worth watching closely. At the time of the trade his velocity wasn't that high, but even with that slower fastball, he had an instinctive feel for exactly when to throw it so the batter couldn't react."
On the screen, Han Doyoon wound up again.
Thud!
The bat of the number-two hitter, Kondo Masataka, sliced empty air.
"Strike!"
Gang Seungwon's voice rose again.
"First pitch, another fastball! Is Han Doyoon really trying to finish this with nothing but heaters today? That's seven straight fastballs already!"
Unlike Gang Seungwon's excited banter, Doyoon on the mound took the ball back without a flicker of expression.
Then the second pitch, the third, the fourth—all the way through a full nine pitches, Doyoon kept throwing nothing but four-seam fastballs. But Kondo Masataka showed no intention of going quietly. Once he found the timing, he put on a display of the cut ability unique to Japanese contact hitters, fouling off Doyoon's heaters one after another.
Crack!
Crack!
Watching the ball all the way to the mitt before snatching it foul with a compact swing—Gang Seungwon, momentarily forgetting his duty as a biased home broadcaster, fell into pure admiration at the remarkable hitting skill.
"Wow… Kondo Masataka is no pushover either."
"Right. His timing keeps getting disrupted and he still forces them foul. Japanese hitters are genuinely annoying when they do that."
Gang Seungwon kept nodding at Kwak Daehwi's words. The chat was in the same mood.
On the mound, Doyoon locked eyes with his catcher for a moment. He dusted the rosin bag from his hand once, then exchanged signs again.
Crack!
The bat of Fukuoka Seiryuu's stubborn number-two hitter, Kondo Masataka—who had been cutting pitch after pitch—finally forced contact on a fastball that ran well off the outside edge.
The third baseman tracked the high pop-up a few steps, then stopped. The ball settled cleanly into his glove.
Foul fly.
I squeezed the rosin bag once more and set it back down. Before handing things over to Shimamura Kenta, Kondo Masataka had hung on with real tenacity, determined to prove he was no easy out either. The pregame notes had said that while he lacked Shimamura's raw power, his contact and plate discipline were nearly on the same level—so I hadn't taken him lightly. Still, I never expected the at-bat to drag on this long.
Throwing nothing but four-seams right in his face made it brutal.
Ten consecutive four-seams to Kondo Masataka alone, and sixteen straight four-seams counting everything before that. Normally the textbook approach against a lefty like Kondo would have been to mix in cutters, but I had a reason for grinding through with pure four-seams.
…Because the next batter is.
Shimamura Kenta.
Today's target—and the whole reason I'd been hiding the cutter.
Surviving Kondo on fastballs alone wasn't simple stubbornness. I wanted to see how far this kind of velocity and movement would play. And at the same time, I didn't want to show the next hitter a single thing.
Ever since learning from Gang Junseong, the sinking movement on my cutter had gotten stronger. Shimamura Kenta was a lefty. The cutter was essential against him, so I wanted to keep that improved movement as an unexpected variable.
I shifted my gaze. Shimamura Kenta walked slowly toward the box. With his signature routine of wringing the bat once, he settled in—and the composure radiating off him was hard to believe belonged to a twenty-four-year-old.
Yeah. He's different.
From his stance alone, there wasn't a single gap to exploit. He opened his upper body slightly to secure his sight line, then used that view to lock onto my hand. His lower half was planted like roots driven into the dirt—solid, immovable.
Activate Full Effort.
Full Effort Pitching
Stamina consumption is doubled.
With the alert, heat flooded into my shoulder. I was ready.
The last line from the scouting report I'd read before the game floated back up.
No visible weaknesses.
Then there was only one answer left.
Power versus power. Let's see who's stronger.
"After that long battle, Kondo Masataka is retired on a foul fly to third. Team Leader, what was Han Doyoon's pitch limit today again?"
"Ah—Doyoon's personal limit is fifty, but we asked the manager to cut him off within thirty if possible."
Gang Seungwon nodded at Cheon Sojin's answer.
"Thirty is fewer than I expected. A player knows his own body best, though—is there a reason you asked for the thirty-pitch cutoff?"
"Honestly, as fans can probably tell just from watching the ball, Doyoon's body came around faster than expected. So the judgment was that we needed some regulation to hit one hundred percent right at the start of the season."
"Ah—so peaking too early can be a problem too?"
Kwak Daehwi answered in Cheon Sojin's place.
"Of course. Baseball is a sport that has to grind through a hundred-forty-four-game schedule. Getting your body ready too early isn't automatically a good thing. You're just burning through the stamina you'll need during the season for no reason…"
Gang Seungwon nodded.
"So right now it's not about hitting the absolute peak—it's about timing when you reach that peak."
"Exactly."
Kwak Daehwi was firm. Cheon Sojin picked up the thread again.
"On top of that, Han Doyoon is a power pitcher with a Tommy John history, so we need to be as careful as possible with his usage. Every pitch he throws wears on the ligament."
Gang Seungwon summed it up.
"Man, I'm really glad we brought these two on today. One speaking from a player's perspective, the other from the front office—they're giving us so much great insight. Don't you think?"
Like the veteran caster he was, Gang Seungwon worked the chat naturally.
Then, spotting Shimamura Kenta stepping into the box, he snapped right back to the game.
"So then—with his thirty-pitch limit, this will be the last batter Han Doyoon faces. Fukuoka Seiryuu's number-three hitter, Shimamura Kenta, steps in."
The camera found the box. Shimamura Kenta gave the bat a light twirl, then settled in slowly.
"Shimamura Kenta looks extremely relaxed, doesn't he?"
"That's just his style. Honestly… he's evaluated as a hitter who wouldn't look out of place in the majors right now, so that composure comes from real confidence in his ability."
"Here comes the first pitch."
Doyoon drove his leg up hard, and for a beat everything went still. Then—
BOOM!
The ball Doyoon threw buried itself low and away, packing the mitt with an explosive crack that shattered the silence. Gang Seungwon's shout erupted right after.
"Whoa—! One sixty-one! One sixty-one on the first pitch!"
The chat exploded at the same time.
The chat casting doping suspicions was deleted almost immediately, but the velocity was that shocking. The previous Korean record sat at 160 km/h. And here was a number that broke it—in a spring camp practice game, no less.
Gang Seungwon pressed down the excitement leaking into his voice and continued.
"Uh… it doesn't show on the broadcast feed, but the screen we're looking at displays velocity down to the decimal. The speed Han Doyoon just recorded was exactly 160.9 km/h."
The chat blew up again.
"…Wow."
Kwak Daehwi could only keep marveling, while Cheon Sojin looked completely speechless.
In the box, Shimamura Kenta watched the first pitch go by, then adjusted his helmet once. What he'd just seen wasn't a simple heater—and the hitter himself felt that first.
"Wow… Han Doyoon, he was at this level? That young pitcher who dominated over four games at the end of last season and got fans dreaming—he's come back with his blade sharpened far beyond what it was."
Gang Seungwon's voice no longer bothered hiding the excitement.
The camera cut back to the mound. Doyoon's face showed zero concern for the fact that he'd just thrown 160.9 km/h. He settled his breathing, checked the sign, and took the ball again in the same rhythm.
In the box, Shimamura Kenta was no longer relaxed either. He lowered the bat from his shoulder and narrowed his stance by a fraction.
Gang Seungwon spoke in a low tone.
"One pitch, and the entire atmosphere has shifted."
And Han Doyoon lifted his leg once more.