Runaway Train (Part 2)

Was it the lingering afterglow of that first game? Or was it simply that the Doubles at full strength really were that kind of team?

Busan never found its pulse again.

They were trampled flat by a relay of pitchers — Andy, Jackson, Jeong In-woo — each one a completely different flavor of misery.

The second game, in particular, was a proud pitchers' duel.

Busan reached for So Dong-jin, and in the end it wasn't a bad call. A 'So Dong-jin day' had arrived.

A mid-3.00s ERA starter, sure — but the kind of fickle arm who would toss a shutout one start and give up seven runs in three innings the next. When the dice rolled a six, this was exactly the kind of situation where you could hand him the ball with confidence.

"Noh In-seong isn't even playing, right? In a situation like this, all we have to do is watch out for Song Jin-wook!"

The problem was that Andy, on one of his days, was every bit as unanswerable.

He wasn't a power pitcher, but he knew how to throw every pitch under the sun, which forced hitters to narrow their options. The four-seam wasn't even his most-used pitch — it was the sinker and slider he threw next most often, and both were in pristine condition.

With fingers that felt like they were glued to the seams, Andy went after the strike zone without apology.

"Swing! Strike three — batter out!"

"Argh! Damn it, I swear I was taking that pitch!"

He'd swung like a man trying to snap his bat in half, and his reward was a strikeout.

"That's what I get for facing a guy my own age. So there was still room left for him to grow. Unbelievable."

Jong Min-soo wore a hollow expression as he took note of the mercenary's growth — growth he'd already been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠watching since last year.

In the end, So Dong-jin's valiant effort — eight innings, two runs — went for nothing.

[And with that ball caught—!! A complete game shutout! Two hits, zero walks — a shutout! Andy drives the Doubles to their third straight win!]

[Command painting every corner, not once crowded down the middle — a victory of pure craft! A single pitcher covering every inning of the ballgame!]

Andy delivered even more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than that monstrous effort demanded, and he severed Busan's pulse at the root.

It was from this point on that the Doubles, riding the momentum, truly started to run.

The next two starters couldn't shoulder everything alone the way Andy had — but they were good pitchers, capable of at least holding the quota assigned to them.

Jackson and Jeong In-woo each deployed their full arsenals and succeeded in eating innings steadily. Jackson went seven innings and gave up four runs; Jeong In-woo, courtesy of the ballpark's cramped dimensions, six innings and five.

"Then we'll just settle it with the bats. C'mere, wait—!"

Conversely, the sheer bad luck of running into a freshly rested Noh In-seong did the most damage.

In the third game, two home runs and five RBIs blew the game open before it had properly begun. In the finale, a bullpen day meant to at least avoid the sweep ground through some trouble —

"No, why do I have to take this humiliation in a ping-pong hall every single time! Jamsil! Bring me Jamsil—!!"

Even as they pounded Jeong In-woo — who was raving about having the stadium itself declared unfit for play —

Busan figured they could take today's game and was already planning to even the series at two wins apiece.

Thwaaack—!!

At the final at-bat, muttering that he'd at least earn his meal money, Noh In-seong knocked a two-run homer that barely cleared the wall.

[AH!! He got it—!! It's going! Going! Home—!! RUN! A two-run homer for Noh In-seong! Noh In-seong, who was silent the entire day until this very moment!]

[Noh In-seong just blew Song Joong-ho's save! They gambled with a one-run lead because the red-hot Song Jin-wook was due up next!]

"Phew. Good thing the margin didn't get any wider. If it had, there'd be a whole lot of 'clown this' and 'clown that' going around right now."

If the score had already blown open — say, an eight-run lead, and he'd tacked on a two-run homer on top of it?

The message boards would have been a hundred percent Noh In-seong's exclusive property.

"Clown GOAT. Can't hit a single thing when it actually matters, just pads his late-game homer stats every single game, that clown..."

He would have swallowed every curse in the dictionary, and stayed angry all the way until he got to thrash Incheon the following week. Instead, at the very last moment, he manufactured the perfect situation — I wasn't clowning around; I was simply waiting for the decisive moment! — and by handing Busan a blown save, sealed the Doubles' fourth straight win to open the second half.

Before anyone had even noticed, Busan had been swept in all four games of the second half's opening series.

A three-game lead had, without ceremony, been chased all the way down to a tie for second place.

"...How? How did we, the second-place team... end up tied in winning percentage...?"

On one side stood Daejeon, having captured every chariot, cannon, and horse on the board while happily coasting along on easy mode; on the other, Busan, forced to play a game of janggi — Korean chess — while handing back the very pieces it had already taken. It was a bitter contrast.

From the very start of the second half, every rank except first place had begun scrambling into a jumbled mess all over again.

The Doubles' momentum was anything but ordinary.

When the Incheon series arrived and the schedule rolled out two bottom-rotation starters ahead of Noh In-seong, Incheon didn't consider it much of a worry.

"This time, too — against their two aces, and on Noh In-seong's day, we run the concession strategy!"

They intended to reuse a strategy that had worked once before. Worst case, they'd drop the series but stay respectable.

And then, on the complacent Incheon side, the scrubs launched their great counter-revolt.

The claim that "the Doubles run a six-man rotation because Noh In-seong exists" was, in fact, wrong.

"We have plenty of starters, so we run six of them — to put Noh In-seong in the lineup as a hitter as often as possible."

Thanks to trades and smart asset-grabbing, the Doubles were deep in starting pitching, and the six-man rotation was doing enormous work preserving the arms of the staff.

Really, what had been the advantage of running a six-man rotation the entire first half?

The swingmen patching the gaps had it somewhat rough, sure.

But it meant the core bullpen carried a far lighter overload.

"'Somewhat'? Damn it, somewhat?!"

"Hey, without Dong-yeop hyung out there, we'd have been the ones falling apart first?!"

"My shoulder's aching too, you know. Manager?!"

So Dong-yeop, Yeom Dong-goo, and Jin Ju-hyuk were the ones eating the long innings, plugging the holes left by the fifth and sixth starters. The bottom of the rotation was inherently unstable — some days they were simply treated as an early bullpen.

The opener. The pitcher who trots out first, throws his innings, and exits.

When the dice came up low and a starter got yanked early, those three would grind out inning after inning while the offense won the game. That had been the win-streak plan through the first half of the season.

"Wow. I've never once been managed like this in my life."

"Right? I don't even report for duty unless it's a save situation."

In exchange, the hold-and-save core of Cho Hyo-jin and Kim Jin-hong lived in relative luxury. There were plenty of days that consisted of a one-inning hold or a one-inning save, and frequent full days off besides. In blowout wins they'd occasionally take the mound in garbage time, just enough not to lose their feel.

But once the second half began, even those three rarely pitched more than a single inning.

"Did they change the management or something? My outings have been getting shorter lately."

Conversely, with save and hold situations cropping up constantly, the two pitchers who'd been feasting on honey found themselves buried in work.

"Ugh, this is insane...!!"

Joo Hak-soo, being groomed as the closer of the future, and Kang Ji-hoon, the bullpen ace of the future — whenever those two pitched on consecutive days, the backups came sprinting out of the pen as reinforcements.

All four were being ground up at a frantic pace, nothing like the first half of the season.

Was this part of Jeong Im-taek's grand scheme of pitcher management? It was not.

Even in an era when starters covered fewer innings than before, a starting pitcher was still a starting pitcher. Even the bottom-rotation arms — functionally leadoff men for the bullpen — were expected to chew through at least three or four innings before handing the ball over.

That was on the days they got shelled. And on the days they pitched well?

Gutting out six innings — even seven — while working through jam after jam was hardly uncommon.

Besides, pitchers who took the mound often accumulated service time and experience, and baseball is, after all, a profession where — injury aside — steady growth is far from rare.

The real question was when each of them would reach the moment of realization: this is what the problem is, and throwing this way means getting beaten like the first dog day of summer and beaten again like the last.

Andy and Jackson had learned it the hard way in Triple-A. Jeong In-woo had learned it getting hammered back when the team was in the gutter.

"I figured every last bit of it out yesterday evening, you bastards. The rest of you are on your own."

The man with the shattered inhibition threshold was, for all practical purposes, on his second lap of life — the lesson obviously didn't apply to him.

That left exactly two pitchers on the staff with comparatively thin starting experience.

The fifth starter, and the sixth starter.

For Jeong In-young and Kim Jeong-mook, the season had arrived in which they had to internalize, in their very bones, the answer to one question: what must I do to stop getting beaten?

Take Jeong In-young first. The young pitcher's problem was that he simply had far too few pitches.

A four-seam and a slider. Those two pitches ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were his entire livelihood.

Truthfully, the bullpen suited him — but his velocity held up even deep into outings, which made that a waste too painful to accept. So they'd parked him at the bottom of the rotation and given him every opportunity they could. Still, having exactly one breaking pitch was a serious problem.

Especially in an era where any slider that drifted over the plate got torched.

"Damn it, I've got nothing to throw but the slider!"

And since his command wasn't anything special, he occasionally threw sliders that got sucked right into the zone. Even the good ones carried the constant risk of flattening into a hanging slider and leaving the yard instantly. Pitching like this was less like starting a ballgame and more like playing minesweeper — every step taken with trembling care — and before he knew it, he'd be out of gas or blown off the mound.

Into this carnage, one inhibition-free pitcher offered an answer.

"Don't drop it — cut it sideways. Turn your wrist over."

This was the proper technique for a true vertical slider — the so-called gyro-spin slider.

He could already throw a slider that broke hard laterally. So what if, instead of topspin, he could put gyro spin on it?

"Now you've got yourself one honest-to-god dropping pitch. And the worse the spin comes out, the better."

Thrown well, it was a deathball. Thrown poorly, it was just a slightly drooping batting-practice ball.

But when his old slider was thrown poorly, it became batting practice anyway, didn't it?

Master it and survive — or fail and end up looking like your own well-done steak. It was one of the two.

But a guy who had obsessed over nothing but the slider since his school days was bound to be different in at least one way.

"...Oh. Oh! It's working!"

"...Is it because every ounce of talent he had for other breaking pitches all drained into this one? Why does he master this instantly and no other grip..."

A man who couldn't throw a changeup to save his life had picked up the gyro slider grip in the blink of an eye. In the brief window of preparation before the second half — an instantaneous, flawless copy.

Jeong In-young's one and only breaking pitch, his slider, had carried a pitch value of just 0.5 per 100 thrown last season. Throwing a hundred sliders meant losing only half a run fewer — and now he was clutching that trump card in his hand.

"Strike! Batter out!"

[Whoa, what was that? A new pitch? It dropped, folks!]

[No, that's... well. Think of it as the ball he used to cut sideways, now dropped straight down instead.]

Hitters who had been hyper-focused on that pitch now had to watch their own batting averages plunge along with the diving ball.

A pitch of similar value, breaking in a different direction, had just been added to the menu.

Incheon batters' blood pressures were detonating one after another.

"Damn it, where the hell did he learn that bullsh— damn it, that looks familiar?"

"Who else? There's exactly one guy in this league who throws that pitch."

The madman who already robbed them of victory on a regular basis with his own version of that pitch was now poisoning the bottom of their lineup too — and watching their convulsions with a pleasant smile on his face.

From Incheon's perspective: then surely tomorrow, at least! But with the fifth starter on the mound and running hot, no way was the sixth starter — who could be pulled at any moment — getting a day off.

Kim Jeong-mook began by throwing away every breaking pitch he'd ever learned.

His hands weren't big — a genuine drawback for a pitcher, and one he carried himself. Rather than keep throwing pitches that didn't fit his body and getting lit up for it, better to discard everything and start over.

"Ugh, this thing is cramped as hell. No way I can keep throwing this."

A formal breakup with his old curveball and forkball.

He kept the changeup as his only true dropping pitch, and added a slider plus a sinker that ran harder laterally.

He hadn't mastered either of those two in that short span, of course.

Simply lowering his arm slot had naturally revived the slider.

He'd always thrown it — but from an over-the-top delivery, it had offered zero merit. It broke only vaguely, and far more often than not, he got torched for it.

But with his arm lowered, his fastball itself had taken on a tendency to run in toward the batter's hands.

"Strike! Batter out!"

That once-ambiguous movement now traveled in the opposite direction from what hitters were used to seeing from him, and so it played enormous. Ah — and of course, with the lowered arm, the lateral break got sharper too.

"...How does dropping your arm a few inches do that? What have I been doing all this time?"

"What could you have done? You think a delivery twisted up just to squeeze out one extra kph was ever going to be right?"

After a session with the pitching coach, the verdict: his four-seam had organically become a shuuto, and on top of it, a sinker that bored in even harder.

As it happened, the team already had a sinker master on hand, so the pitch transfer went remarkably smoothly.

"My sinker? Sure thing. My kid brother couldn't throw a sinker in a hundred years anyway, so you might as well learn it."

The price for acquiring a pitch that could put hitters away: giving up a measly two kph of velocity. A bargain, all things considered.

That said, being unfamiliar with the pitch — unlike the slider he'd thrown for years — he did plunk his share of batters.

Thwock—!!

[Ah... another hit batsman. That's... the second one already, if you're keeping count.]

[He's going to be upset. That was a sinker in on the hands a moment ago too. And a sinker again this time.]

He was no deity — just, by service time, roughly a three-year senior — but Incheon's backup catcher finally lost his temper.

"Hey! If you can't even control your—!!"

He'd been crowding the plate when the sinking pitch clipped him, and he flared up on the spot. But the moment someone started walking over from shortstop, all his fury evaporated and he went docile as a lamb.

"Keep running your mouth and I'll take the mound myself for your next at-bat. Don't like it? Step up to the plate."

"......"

An absolute authority capable of erasing an entire tantrum with a single raised finger.

Because Noh In-seong was there, Kim Jeong-mook could sprinkle sinkers in off the hands without a shred of worry.

And then came the highlight of it all: Noh In-seong's one-man show.

Incheon had already been through a full-blown catastrophe once last year. Players gone, manager replaced, franchise plunged into rebuilding — they had become the weakest of the weak.

And against that weakest of the weak, Noh In-seong succeeded in tearing off yet another page of the record book.

The vertical slider the pitchers before him had thrown, Noh In-seong could throw too. He had nothing that bored in deep on the hands quite like a sinker — but he could shamelessly bore four-seam fastballs in there instead.

"GYAAAAH—!!"

[Ooh, and that one bored in deep on him. Seong Hyeon-jae flinching away in sheer terror.]

"Get up, you gutless bastard! If you want to hit the slider away, you stand in there even when the artillery comes inside!"

"Is this guy out of his mind?!"

Opposing hitters frozen solid in the fear of death consecrated yet another complete game shutout to Noh In-seong.

With Incheon swept as well, the win streak now stood at eight.

And Gwangju, the next team up, trembled uncontrollably as it watched this all unfold.