An Opponent You Can't Afford to Lose to, Even in Rock-Paper-Scissors (4)

The baseball fans watching the game felt like they were riding a roller coaster.

"And that wraps up the top of the first — Korea's offense comes up empty."

"Still, our guys were clearly seeing the ball well out there. I'd say today's worth looking forward to."

"Ah... he's still down and not getting up. Let's hope it's nothing serious for Park Dong-min..."

"Pitching coach Jung Eon-young is heading out to the mound. It looks like a change is being prepared."

"Kang Min-hyuk retires the side in order to end the inning!"

"He came through in a huge moment. This game was one bad pitch away from slipping away from us entirely."

"Ah, and once again the inning ends in frustration."

"Takahiro, who took the mound in that jam, ultimately shut it down. Our hitters need to shake this off quickly and refocus on the game."

"Kim Yi-seon! He strikes out Japan's home run threat Hatsuya!"

"It's hard to believe this kid is still in high school. The U-18 squad that won the world championship this year, Kang Min-hyuk who took the mound before him — the future of Korean baseball is looking awfully bright."

"Ah, scoreless again this inning... this is shaping up into a tight pitching duel."

"Japan's been pulling out relievers who made their names in NPB as early as possible — they're going all-in. Our hitters should stay patient and pick their spots in the innings to come."

Truly a public-sentiment graph swinging up and down like nothing a manic-depressive's mood cycle could hope to match.

And the manager had his own complaints to make.

"Come on, everyone's clearly hitting the ball well... so why in God's name can't we score?!"

It wasn't that they couldn't get hits — they were racking them up just fine. It was the extra-base hits that refused to come. Thanks to that, the opposing starter had been yanked early, and the relievers who followed were all getting knocked around and rotated out at a brisk pace too.

He'd toyed with sending up a pinch hitter out of sheer frustration, but there was nobody suitable. Pinpointing which players were in form on any given day was supposed to be Ban Il-soo's signature strength. He'd packed his lineup with the hottest, sharpest bats he had, and they still weren't scoring — was shipping out the guys with merely average feel supposed to fix anything?

And then there was one more cause for worry.

"Manager, Yi-seon threw great, but it really is time to take him out."

"Mmm..."

Kang Min-hyuk and Kim Yi-seon had both pitched brilliantly, but surprise had played its share in that too. Min-hyuk was visibly being adjusted to by the Japanese hitters as he neared the end of his second trip through the order, and the same went for Yi-seon.

Which is to say, there was no guarantee the next pitchers could hold the line this well.

"Pitching coach, who do you like?"

"I've got Dong-ho warming up. His stuff looks good today, and a fastball-heavy kid like Yi-seon should catch the hitters off guard again when they see Dong-ho next."

"...Fine. Do it that way."

Really, if they'd just scored runs like they were supposed to, none of this hand-wringing would be necessary.

Down off the mound, ice packs strapped to both shoulders, Kim Yi-seon watched the game with a sullen scowl.

"I'm telling you, I could still be out there throwing."

Supposedly the old man was retiring for good after this tournament, so fine, maybe it figured. Unless he'd gone senile, why on earth would you pull a pitcher who was dealing?

So what if a few Japanese hitters had squared up his fastball a couple of times? That was because those contact freaks were contact freaks.

He'd come off the mound having finished the bottom of the seventh; it was now the top of the eighth, Korea batting.

And this inning, even the hits had dried up — a clean two outs, nobody on.

"If it's that frustrating, you should've seen how I used to hit."

Runners reaching base everywhere, and still no runs. The old-school baseball crowd would grumble something like 'the opposing pitcher just manages the jams well,' while modern, science-and-statistics-driven baseball would read it as 'the offense lacks slugging, and without slugging there's no run creation.'

And when you said slugging, who came to mind? Wasn't that Kim Yi-seon, whose raw power tool was among the best there was? The very prospect Twins fans online joked about splitting into three players — 'Right arm Kim Yi-seon, left arm Kim Yi-seon, hitter Kim Yi-seon — can't we just divide him up?'

By rights, he should have fired off a clutch four-seamer and decided the game with one thunderous swing.

"Didn't you hit like .250-something in high school?"

Peak nonsense from Si-hwan-hyung, a man who knew nothing about baseball — the kind of absurd claim that he'd never take the mound again anyway. There was no need to be rattled by such garbage one bit.

"Hyung, I hit another clutch knock, didn't I? Batting average isn't everything."

"By that sabermetrics stuff you love so much, clutch is supposed to be a myth and all that, no?"

That was just the nonsense of nerds fondling spreadsheets in their bedrooms. If they'd ever witnessed Kim Yi-seon, the living embodiment of clutch itself, they'd have changed their minds.

And yet this baseball ignoramus had the gall to sigh at him.

"Anyway, just watch. If clutch actually exists, there's nobody better suited to it than that hyung over there."

"...Sung Yeon-joon sunbae? Isn't he oh-for today?"

To be fair, as a national team player, Sung Yeon-joon wasn't hopelessly bad — but between a body wearing out with age and the demands of the catcher's position, hitting had never been his standout skill.

And hadn't his big-stage moments with the bat been few and far between?

But Si-hwan-hyung showed no intention of answering the question, simply sealing his mouth shut. Why do people stop talking halfway through a sentence.

Top of the eighth, two outs. The score: 0–0.

Standing in the box, the number-eight hitter Sung Yeon-joon ran through one final check of his body.

Zero to zero, even though this was already his fourth trip to the plate. Almost laughable.

He twisted and turned here and there, and sure enough, his joints and muscles were listening to him like absolute garbage.

Even in his roaring twenties, by this point in a game a catcher's body was never in great shape — it came with the position. So of course it was asking the impossible for a body already worn down to its thirties to hold up now.

Steering his creaking frame into the batter's box, he looked out at the opposing pitcher. Amasika Keijiro.

A closer for the Orix Buffaloes, a team so hopeless in NPB that the word 'answer' didn't apply — the one man there who did his job, treated as the hopeless club's lone hope.

But he was not Japan's national team closer. The real late-inning arms had already been rushed in from the fifth to smother the fires.

On top of that, with the ninth still left to play, Amasika had taken the mound to conserve their resources — which made him, at best, a less-than-ideal choice.

But as explained before, Sung Yeon-joon was a remarkably meticulous man. Combined with the catcher's instincts, the data on the opposing club — down to middling relievers like this one — lived entirely inside his head.

A classic right-handed fireballer. Not at his youngest's level, mind you, but a max velocity touching 156 was a punishing level even by Asian standards.

He had command problems, though, and a two-pitch repertoire of four-seam and splitter — the exact profile that leapt to mind when you said 'Japanese closer.'

Ways to attack a pitcher that simple came to him by the handful.

At last Amasika readied his first pitch. From his windup to his delivery, everything was crude and cluttered with wasted motion — the leg kick hoisted up with almost excessive height.

"Striiiike!"

"First pitch, called strike."

"Sung Yeon-joon watching that one go by."

A low-and-away fastball on the first pitch. It was a strike, no doubt — but in that instant, Sung Yeon-joon began to feel at ease.

"Ball!"

"Ball two."

"Ah, great discipline there. That splitter had some seriously nasty angle on it."

It was a genuinely good splitter — and utterly beside the point.

"Ball!"

"Ball three. Two straight balls."

"Sung ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yeon-joon has always been praised for his pitch recognition, you know? He's working the count beautifully here."

'Excellent eye' was the label that followed Sung Yeon-joon around. But really, now? He was nothing like those monsters who stared at the ball alone and matched not just the pitch type but the trajectory itself.

The true root of Sung Yeon-joon's pitch recognition — and the reason Lee Si-hwan had called him a clutch hitter — was this: he could read an opponent's information and that day's pitching patterns, and infer with high probability what pitch was coming and where it would be placed.

Even a pitcher claiming to throw balls with no thought at all has patterns. All the more so with a team like Japan, where the dugout's fingerprints were all over the pitching decisions.

As the game wore into its later innings, their patterns and their thinking handed him his certainty.

Just now, too: a setup pitch low and away, followed by two dipping splitters for chase. Exactly the script he'd shown all day.

Which meant the pitch coming now would follow the same script, wouldn't it? Ahead in the count, there was no reason for the pitcher to shy away from a confrontation.

Pitch four. With that signature sprawling, oversized motion, the Japanese pitcher delivered.

CRRAAACK!!!!