One Step Away from All-Star MVP

Late July. The All-Star Race was finally coming into view of its finish line, and the North-South Exchange Series was gradually winding down toward its conclusion.

The world might be drowning in COVID-19 chaos, but that meant the people stuck at home with nothing to do cared about sports broadcasts far more than anyone expected — and baseball's popularity was holding up remarkably well.

Plenty of experts had predicted that baseball was a poor fit for the new generation, that if the sport migrated online it would eventually be crowded out by other forms of entertainment. Turns out they were wrong.

There were all sorts of interpretations of why. On the simple end, some offered the half-hearted analysis that bored people had simply used this as a chance to become new baseball fans. On the convoluted end, others argued that the political situation had rippled all the way down into baseball's box office.

But the mainstream interpretations came down to three.

The first was the surge of the traditionally popular teams.

The Seoul Dragons, Busan Giants, Gwangju Phoenix, and Pyongyang Fighters — all the beloved franchises of tradition — were exceeding expectations and making their case. On top of that, the rising box-office powerhouses Seoul Twins and Uiju Rangers had cut loose their dismal results from years past and were gazing at a possible playoff berth, giving fans every reason to cheer their hearts out.

And the second reason was the breakout performance of the new faces.

These were players who had shown promise all along but never cracked the first-team rosters, instead staying rookie-eligible while marinating in the minors. Then the COVID season arrived, cramming makeup games and postponed contests into a suffocating schedule — and to manage the starters' workloads, the clubs started handing the young guys real first-team opportunities.

The result was a simultaneous blossoming of rookies across the league. As if to prove that what they'd lacked was never practice but opportunity, the rookies were turning the league upside down.

The rise of these prospects drew national-team fans — long frustrated by the glacial pace of the team's generational turnover — into watching other clubs' games with real interest, and for team fans, whose greatest catharsis has always been watching their own kids grow up, it became irresistible over-immersion fuel.

Good results, promising players shooting up, and a captive audience stuck at home with nothing else to do — it was hardly a mystery that baseball's boom was continuing despite the pandemic.

But what kind of year had last year been? It was the season of the Korean Series between Gwangju Phoenix and Pyongyang Fighters, the traditional darlings of the south and north, wasn't it? And the Fighters' ace Lee Si-hwan wasn't just the national team's number one starter — he was a young, wildly popular star with his sights set on a move to America.

Last year had drawn a massive audience on the back of that enormous good news, and this year the boom hasn't even dipped? In this climate, when attending games in person is banned outright? No matter how much positive news the league itself generates, it makes no sense.

But consider the final — and most important — driver of the boom, and everyone will nod along. Honestly, the only real tragedy is that the pandemic made everyone forget this monumental draw.

The arrival of the Golden Generation.

The high school draftees born in 2001, selected in the 2020 draft. Uiju Rangers shortstop Lee Seung-kwon, Daejeon Bears catcher Nam Kang-min, Gwangju Phoenix outfielder Cho Jang-hoon, Hamheung Tigers third baseman Min Hyun-woo, Cheongjin Mountains first baseman Moon Ji-soo.

Beyond them, a whole wave of 2001-born rookies was tearing it up across the league.

Consider that even college-drafted rookies normally spend a year or two adapting to pro ball in the minors. These high schoolers had skipped the adjustment period entirely and were flying around the field — calling them the greatest rookie class in history would be an understatement.

And above all... those players were gorgeous.

After all, whether they'd been major-school players locked in long rivalries with the protagonist in the manga, or nameless extras drifting through the background, they'd all been starters at the major schools — meaning the artist had drawn them with care.

Thanks to that, these figures from the art style of The Weakest High School Ace — a series whose story earned, at best, a lukewarm verdict but whose artwork was universally acknowledged as the genuine article — had stepped straight off the page. How could they not be devastatingly good-looking?

People joked that the Golden Generation's advance had cut into boy band album sales. That's how hard their popularity was to put into words. If it weren't for the pandemic, there'd no doubt have been endless incidents and scandals over them.

Ordinarily, each of these players would have been future franchise stars in the making, marquee names the league office itself would push. And yet none of them were getting the spotlight.

Why?

A first-round, first-overall pick with the colossal market of Seoul and Wirye City behind him, a local boy who'd come up through a regional high school — the marketing advantages were enormous.

Looks? As the rival character ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whose arc was second only to the protagonist's in narrative weight, he was drawn distinctly handsome, in deliberate contrast to the main character.

And his numbers weren't rookie numbers — you'd have to measure them against the entire league, not his draft class, to find anyone worth comparing.

It was on the back of these overwhelming advantages that Kim Yi-seon reigned as the summit of the Golden Generation.

No matter how much the wolves and foxes snarled, the throne belonged to the tiger — the once-in-history hype of the Golden Generation was merely one more ornament in Kim Yi-seon's crown.

With Min-hyuk, at least, people could disagree — he's a teammate who gets underrated, his velocity buries his evaluation, and so on. The others didn't even get that much.

And no one was more dissatisfied with this state of affairs than one man. Lee Seung-kwon, who had harbored a peculiar competitive streak toward Kim Yi-seon since their high school days, was waiting for exactly one thing: the road series that would close out the All-Star Race.

"Reading the papers again?"

The Uiju Rangers' road hotel. Since the Seoul Dragons played in the Northern Division too, the Rangers had grown quite familiar with the Seoul hotel designated as their road lodging.

Which meant it wasn't hard to track down Lee Seung-kwon in a corner of the lobby lounge, glued to his smartphone.

"I've told you before. The media companies are all headquartered in Seoul, so Seoul teams get more coverage. Don't let it get to you. Just do your job."

Even Lee Seung-kwon — whose edges had sharpened lately under the stress — had to sheepishly pocket his phone at the admonishment from Sung Yeon-joon, the team's spiritual pillar, its captain, and the national team's catcher.

And Sung Yeon-joon's words weren't empty consolation; there was real truth in them. All things being equal, players on capital-region clubs did get a little more attention, while regional players were mostly covered by their local outlets.

"Senior. Still, isn't this a bit much?"

But there's a limit to everything, damn it. That was all of it. Every article that came out today, to be exact.

Sure, the Uiju Rangers weren't as popular as the traditional fan-favorite clubs, and fine, Kim Yi-seon was a monster — but Lee Seung-kwon was fairly confident he had built a fandom and popularity all his own.

And yet somehow every newspaper article was Kim Yi-seon, Kim Yi-seon, Kim Yi-seon, occasionally Kang Min-hyuk, then back to Kim Yi-seon.

Worse, half the articles that even mentioned him lumped him in with Kim Yi-seon under the "Golden Generation" label. As far as media attention went, comparing himself to Kim Yi-seon was a losing proposition.

Community mentions were the same. Outside of the Rangers' team forum, the general baseball boards barely talked about him — a brief blip when his team played, another blip when he set a new record, and nothing otherwise.

The gap between me and Kim Yi-seon can't possibly be this wide. By all rights I should be basking in baseball's praise as the next great national-team shortstop, the perfect five-tool dream player.

"W-well, that kid Yi-seon's a strange one, you know. The reporters love all that stuff about him — it's not just his skill."

"I work hard at that too, you know..."

It wasn't that he did things specifically to counter Kim Yi-seon, but he had tried plenty of them to court fan service.

He'd done cosplays matching his embarrassing nicknames, set aside time every day for short live-stream chats with fans — honestly, he had tried this and that with real dedication.

"Still, nobody's catching the guy who threw a first pitch wearing a full mascot costume."

Bitter as it was, Senior Sung Yeon-joon was right. That lunatic was a gifted ballplayer with showmanship that defied all reason.

Setting aside the mascot incident, the man uploaded arm-curling, heart-throbbing "boyfriend photos" to his SNS as if he were some idol — how was anyone supposed to keep up with that? (For the record, they weren't concept shots. They were genuinely candid photos Lee Ye-eun had taken of his daily life.)

Infuriating. And yet he had no choice but to admit it. Which made it all the more infuriating.

Is Lee Seung-kwon simply fated never to surpass Kim Yi-seon?

"What, you think it'd be hard to knock that guy down a peg too, Seung-kwon?"

"No, sir!"

"'No,' my foot. It's written all over your face. But listen — I genuinely believe you can get past Kim Yi-seon. You're a batter. He's a pitcher."

He said it with the self-evident certainty of a man declaring that apples fall from trees. But packed inside those words was a great deal of meaning.

"So if you hit just one home run off Kim Yi-seon tomorrow, this whole problem solves itself. You remember everything I taught you, don't you?"

"...Yes, sir!"

A batter can fail seven times out of ten and still be a fine player if he succeeds three.

Baseball is, in the end, a one-on-one duel of bare fists between pitcher and batter.

The pitcher breaks even just by getting outs; if the batter gets a hit, he has beaten that pitcher.

The memory of Sung Yeon-joon's teachings — somewhere along the line, a little more brutal than most — surfaced, and the precise point his senior was driving at now crystallized in Lee Seung-kwon's mind.

"I'll go completely demolish Kim Yi-seon tomorrow, sir."

"That's the spirit. That's the fire I expect from our Rangers rookie with the search-and-destroy mentality. Even if Kim Yi-seon goes on to win the Pitcher's Golden Glove, if you go 4-for-4 with four homers tomorrow, you're the one who won. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, sir!"

And so the senior and junior were burning with motivation, chanting tear Kim Yi-seon apart, when—

"Tch, this one's trickier than I thought."

Kim Yi-seon, as it happened, was thinking about Lee Seung-kwon too.

Prepping for my start against the Uiju Rangers, I was staring at a single chart with a mildly sour feeling.

"Honestly, I don't even get what WPA is supposed to be, let alone why we're basing the All-Star Race on it."

"You are correct. There is no discernible meaning in such an absurd number."

Having Kang Min-hyuk agree with me makes me feel even weirder. If even that guy thinks so, doesn't that mean my take is outdated geezer thinking?

I couldn't tell whether I was wrong and Min-hyuk was merely a broken clock right twice a day, but either way there was a serious problem here.

"No matter how I look at it, this is brutally unfair to starting pitchers. Look at the leaderboard — in a single game I max out around 0.3 at best, but this guy just drips in 0.1 every game and steadily catches up. How am I supposed to shake him?"

The reason for my sour mood was, of course, the All-Star Race.

The race, scheduled to run eighteen days in total, would wrap up at the close of the upcoming series with the Uiju Rangers.

Because COVID had made staging a proper All-Star Game impossible, the league's bright idea was to convert the All-Stars' performances over a set period into WPA — Win Probability Added — and declare a winner every single day.

Whether the South or the North wins, I couldn't care less. The problem that actually mattered to me was the cumulative WPA ranking over the All-Star period...

So even if I bank something like 0.3 in my final start, all Lee Seung-kwon has to do is post 0.16 in each of his two remaining games and it's over. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That's the gap between a starter who takes the mound every five days and a position player who plays every single day.

Isn't this just egregiously unfair? No, the cumulative WPA leader doesn't automatically get MVP — but when the official site is literally lining us up in a ranked list like that, obviously it's going to be the single most important criterion.

In an ordinary All-Star Game, I'd have the advantage — put up a decent game and the reporters would pile on the votes according to popularity. But this convoluted race format is giving me a genuine headache.

"From what I hear, winning 1-0 in a complete-game shutout earns roughly 0.4. Would it not be advisable to throw a shutout tomorrow, then?"

"Not sure. Do you think the manager would allow it?"

Our manager is so terrified that Min-hyuk or I might get ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hurt that he polices our innings and pitch counts like a hawk. One time I threw a measly 73 pitches and came out after just five innings. I'd given up one run that day, sure, but I could easily have gone several more.

Ugh, this is hard. And it's even harder because even if I do my job perfectly, the moment the other guy does his job perfectly, I lose.

"What's this? What useless problem are you two agonizing over now?"

As I kept stewing, someone popped up behind us — Senior Ji Ha-seob.

"If it's close, the writers will probably give it to you. You've got the popularity, after all."

The All-Star Game is fundamentally an event built on popularity and box office, so he's probably right. But it's not a guarantee, is it?

When I kept frowning and worrying even after his advice, the passing reliever tossed in one more line.

"Or, hear me out — if you strike out Lee Seung-kwon every single at-bat, the writers won't dare give the MVP to anyone else. They'd be too embarrassed."

"Huh?"

...Is that right?

"Now that's actually a solid idea!"

"It's not 'solid,' it's just obvious. No matter how much stat-nerding you do, batter and pitcher settle things in the batter's box, don't they? Handing the MVP to the guy who got utterly dominated head-to-head? Nobody's stupid enough to sign up for that headache."

It was the kind of talk that would get him called a heartless scarecrow by defense-first position players who live off their gloves. But the three of us pitchers were nodding along like it was the most reasonable opinion in the world.

I bear no ill will toward this Lee Seung-kwon fellow — but circumstances being what they are, it can't be helped.