Opening Day (2)
What Park Haeun and the club asked of me was simple.
"First, let's tweak your location a bit. Looking at this, excluding the cutter, you're throwing to way too many different spots."
Park Haeun said it while showing me my pitch distribution chart. A heatmap painted evenly across every corner of the strike zone — high and low, inside and out. She was right that the locations were varied. But—
"Isn't that a good thing? Barely any pitches clustered down the middle. They're all near the borderlines."
Almost none of my pitches went to the most dangerous spot — dead center. So honestly, I couldn't quite understand what the problem was.
"Uh... well, yes, but take a look at this."
Park Haeun handed me a sheet of paper. On it was a simplified 3D image of how my pitches moved. Four-seam, cutter, slider. Three trajectories stretched out through the air, overlapping as if layered on top of each other.
"What... is this?"
"This is the ball's initial trajectory from the batter's perspective. About fifteen meters after release."
Park Haeun pointed with her pen to where the three trajectories overlapped, nearly heading the same direction. It was a concept I already knew. PitchTunnel.
Until the ball exits this PitchTunnel, the batter has to decide whether to swing or not. It's not about fully identifying the pitch type or how far it'll drop — it's the window where they first judge whether they can just let it go.
"From a batter's perspective, they'd obviously have to swing at anything coming into the strike zone, right?"
"Right."
"Then think about it from the batter's seat, Doyoon. The ball's coming in toward the lower left. Do you absolutely have to hit this?"
"If it's coming into the strike zone... yeah, I'd swing?"
I answered without much thought. But then—
"It could be a slider, though. Then it'd be a ball, right?"
Park Haeun drew the slider's trajectory with her pen. A line heading toward the lower left, then breaking out of the strike zone and burying itself in the dirt.
For a moment, I was speechless.
"Alright, now imagine it's coming this way."
This time, Park Haeun pointed to the upper right.
"If it's coming this way, does the batter absolutely have to hit this?"
"Uh......"
I thought for a moment. Then carefully said,
"......I think they'd have to swing."
"Why?"
"A pitch heading toward that spot will still catch the zone even if it's a slider. Even if it breaks, it'll break into the zone."
I pointed toward the lower left as I spoke. When I finished, Park Haeun smiled faintly.
"Exactly."
She pointed at the trajectories again.
"That pitch heading toward the lower left I mentioned earlier? There's an upside to not swinging. If it's a slider, it might be a ball."
Park Haeun continued, as if wrapping up her point.
"But a pitch heading this way is different. From the batter's perspective, not swinging is a guaranteed loss."
In other words, there was no reason to wait.
"The odds of it being a strike if you don't swing are just too high."
Park Haeun added,
"So they have no choice but to swing. They don't know what pitch it is, but not swinging is a guaranteed loss — so they have to put the bat on it."
Only then did the structure become clear.
A pitch starting toward the lower left becomes a ball the batter can take.
A pitch starting toward the upper right becomes a ball the batter cannot take.
"That's why we want to lock in the locations. Four-seam to the upper right. Slider to the lower left."
Not pitching that uses the whole zone freely — pitching that erases the batter's options in advance.
I mulled over her words as I looked down at the diagram again. In the end, the point was simple. Whether the batter could choose to swing or not.
Park Haeun had a point. In the actual opening game, against the Busan Mariners — a team rated as having one of the strongest lineups in the league — I'd racked up fifteen strikeouts over six and two-thirds innings without allowing a single baserunner.
Looking at the performance alone, there was no room for argument.
But one thing still bothered me.
"But still. You're saying both the slider and the four-seam are guaranteed to come into the strike zone. So if a batter figures out the pitch type, doesn't that actually make it more dangerous?"
"Most batters won't be able to hit it cleanly even if they know the pitch type. Your stuff has that kind of power, Doyoon."
"Even so. Shouldn't we at least have a Plan B?"
Standing in the box was veteran catcher Kang Hoseop. In his first at-bat, he'd been sitting on my slider and somehow pushed a hard-hit ball the other way.
Like with the other batters, I'd forced him into a must-swing situation. But Kang Hoseop, true to his veteran status, wasn't going down easy. He'd read the pitch type, tracked the trajectory all the way through, and eventually squared it up on the sweet spot of the bat.
"Oh, of course. You absolutely need a Plan B."
"How do we set that up?"
"Figure it out yourself."
"Huh?"
"That's not something number-crunchers like me should worry about. The pitcher and catcher who feel the flow of the game from inside the stadium and are actually throwing the ball know better. Stick to what I said for about seventy percent of your pitches. You fill in the rest, Doyoon."
This was exactly the moment Plan B was needed.
Four-seam.
Kim Gyeongmo's sign was, unsurprisingly, a four-seam. The easiest pitch to locate, and the lowest-risk choice for a first pitch. In this situation, it was practically the textbook call.
But I felt it instinctively. I didn't want to throw a four-seam.
He's sitting on either the fastball or the slider again.
Most batters time themselves to the pitcher's fastest pitch and adjust to the off-speed stuff. But every so often, you get batters who come to the plate having already eliminated one specific pitch type. Especially among veterans — they know their reaction speed to heat isn't what it used to be, so instead of reacting to the ball's movement, they fill the gap with predictive ability forged from countless at-bats of experience.
It's a pretty tough type to face. Especially since against right-handed batters, I was basically a two-pitch guy with the four-seam and slider — so purely by the numbers, there was a fifty-fifty chance of walking right into his trap.
In that case.
All I had to do was throw a pitch he couldn't possibly predict — one I'd never shown him before.
Cutter.
I worked the pitchcom and put up a sign first this time.
Cutter.
Kim Gyeongmo sent the sign back once more. A confirmation, as if asking whether I really meant that pitch. I nodded. Then Kim Gyeongmo spread his mitt wide, as if to say he got it.
Upper left.
Head shake.
I shook my head.
Then lower left. Upper right.
Head shake.
I shook my head at all of them, and finally—
Lower right.
Nod.
Only then did I nod.
Whap!
The ball headed inside, especially near the knees, and Kang Hoseop flinched and stepped back. Even for a veteran batter, the knees are a dangerous area. Naturally, it was a location that forced an instinctive flinch.
But then—
Pop!
The ball broke sharply and buried itself in the zone.
"Strike!"
Sometimes sinkerballers will bury a pitch deep inside against opposite-handed batters. The cutter I'd just thrown was exactly the same idea. Looking like it was going to jam him deep inside, triggering an instinctive fear that froze his reaction — then the ball actually breaks and catches the zone.
Even though it must have been a pitch he never saw coming, Kang Hoseop still looked composed on the outside, true to his veteran nature.
I watched his body language as he stepped back into the box. Even if you try not to show it, after getting startled once, the unconscious mind tends to leak out first.
Just like right now.
He's crowding the plate even more.
As if trying to deny that he'd flinched and stepped back, Kang Hoseop had actually moved a step closer to home plate.
At this point, the battle was as good as over.
Whoosh!
"Strike!"
One high fastball inside. Kang Hoseop didn't so much as twitch.
And right after—
Whoosh!
An even higher fastball inside.
Whiff!
This time the bat came out. No — it had no choice but to come out.
But the swing was way late, the bat seeming to trail after the ball had already settled into the mitt.
"Strike three, out!"
Bottom of the seventh. Adding three more strikeouts, I came off the mound muttering to myself.
If you crowd the plate like that, sitting on the slider is way too obvious.
"Strikeout! Three pitches, three strikes — that wraps up the bottom of the seventh."
After the call, a brief silence settled over the broadcast booth.
The color commentator, staring at the scoreboard, opened his mouth a beat late.
"We've now cleared the seventh inning, but... the Busan Mariners' lineup is completely locked down by Han Doyoon today."
On the replay screen, Kang Hoseop's final swing from the three-pitch strikeout rolled by in slow motion. A bat that only came around after everything was already over.
"What's truly remarkable about this is—"
The commentator's voice naturally dropped lower.
"There are barely any balls put in play at all. Of the twenty-one outs so far, a staggering sixteen have been strikeouts."
He paused briefly.
"And the pitch count."
The play-by-play announcer checked the scoreboard again.
"Eighty-three pitches."
A moment of silence.
"......At this pace, could he actually......"
"Haha......"
No one said anything more. Even without putting it into words, the broadcast booth and the stands were all thinking the same thing.
Only two blank slots remained on the scoreboard.
The eighth and the ninth.
No hits. No walks. No one had stepped on first base for any reason whatsoever.
At least, not yet.