Professional baseball KIA Tigers ace Yang Hyeon-jong (35) was equipped with a new weapon as a way to throw from the mound for a long time in good health.
The slow fastball, which does not even reach 130 km per hour, is the secret weapon.
On the 9th, against SSG Landers, Yang Hyeon-jong appropriately mixed slow fastballs while winning 2 wins of the season and 161 career wins with a perfect pitch of 8 innings, 10 strikeouts and no runs.
Of the 101 pitches thrown that day, 52 were fastballs, more than half of them.
The highest speed was 146 km/h, and the slowest fastball was 129 km/h. His fastball, which was slower than the slider, disturbed the eyes of SSG hitters.
Beyond the period of adjusting the speed by mixing fastballs and breaking balls, he has reached the stage of stealing the timing of batters with just one type of fastball.
Yang Hyeon-jong, who has reached his mid-30s with a 17-year career as a pro, knows better than anyone else that he cannot just throw with strength forever.
As he had to learn how to survive on his own in accordance with his age, Yang Hyeon-jong made his repertoire even richer by outwitting batters with a ‘slow fast ball’ like a breaking ball.
If this slow fastball, which he throws occasionally, works well, Yang Hyeon-jong can do his part with ‘Inning Eater’ without much effort.
Thanks to the new pitching pattern, Yang Hyeon-jong kept the mound for 8 innings in 2 years and 7 months since the game against the LG Twins on October 18, 2020.
He also scored double-digit strikeouts in one game 977 days after the first game of the doubleheader against the Lotte Giants on September 4, 2020.
Yang Hyeon-jong threw 7 or more innings in 3 out of 5 games he started this year.
If he maintains the current pace, Yang Hyeon-jong can break through 170 pitching innings for 9 consecutive years since 2014.먹튀검증
Pitching innings, an evaluation scale for starting pitchers, is the record Yang Hyeon-jong is most proud of.
He cannot stop the flow of time, and it is difficult to increase the number of pitches to his limit. He needs to find a way to effectively throw long innings, and Yang Hyeon-jong has found a breakthrough in controlling the speed of fastballs.