The Choi Won-Tae effect is clear. 15 consecutive starts of 5 innings or more… Now LG is starting baseball too

The LG Twins are starting to play “starting baseball. In every game in August, the starting pitchers went five innings or more.

The Choi Won-tae effect is huge. Since Choi Won-tae’s first start on July 30, when he threw six innings against Doosan in Jamsil, every starting pitcher has gone five innings or more. It’s been 15 games in a row until the Incheon SSG Landers game on July 18.

With starters going five innings or more and a strong bullpen, it’s no wonder they’re doing so well. In those 15 games, the team is 11-4 with a winning percentage of 7.63. KT, which has the best starting pitching, is in first place with a 13-3 record during this time.

For LG, the green light has been given to solidify the top spot in the second half. LG’s number one problem is starting pitching. With Chau-chan out with an injury, they were without a domestic ace, and even if their foreign pitchers pitched well, they had to rely on their bullpen due to the weakness of their domestic starters.

In the past two years, the team challenged for the top spot as the favorite, but fell just short, finishing second and third.

This season, the problem continued. Newly appointed manager Yeom Kyung-yup found new players in the bullpen, including Yoo Young-chan, Baek Seung-hyun, and Park Myung-geun, but struggles continued in the starting lineup.

The team started the season with Kim Yun-sik, Lee Min-ho, and Kang Hyo-jong, but it was a creaky start. Injuries and poor performances meant that the trio never really got going. Lim Chan-kyu, who had been relegated to long relief, lit a fire under the team’s assignment. The team used other pitchers in the fourth and fifth innings, but it was not enough.

Yeom turned to Lee Jung-yong, a set-up man, to start. It was a gamble to turn a specialist bullpen guy who had struggled this season but had 22 saves last year into a starter in the middle of the season. If he failed as a starter, it would be detrimental to both the starters and the bullpen.

It was a challenge early on. Low pitch counts led to a natural bullpen day. I tried a changeup, but it didn’t work, so I switched to a forkball. Once his new curveball and forkball settled in, Lee suddenly became a starter. He went over five innings for the first time with a six-inning no-hitter against Kiwoom on the 2nd. He followed that up with a five-inning no-hitter against KIA on the 9th, and then picked up another win against Samsung Electronics on the 16th with six innings of two-run ball. His combination of fastball and forkball has been fantastic, and he is now a solid starter.

Choi Won-tae went seven innings against SSG on the 18th. So far, only three LG pitchers have gone seven innings: Kelly, Plutko, and Lim Chan-kyu. This season, Kelly has done it five times, Plutko three times, and Lim Chan-kyu twice. Add in Choi Won-tae’s seven innings, and you have four pitchers capable of going seven innings. 온라인카지노

In fact, LG’s fourth and fifth starters can get away with only going five innings because their bullpen is so good. However, the longer the starters can pitch, the stronger the bullpen can be. Choi Won-tae and Lee Jung-yong have pitched more than five innings, which has helped the LG bullpen.

This season, the LG bullpen has a 3.19 ERA, but in August alone, it’s even better at 2.81. This can be interpreted as the effect of the starters pitching longer.

Including starting pitching, LG is 63-2, 37-1, with a winning percentage of 6.03. In the first half of the season, they were only 2.5 games behind second-place SSG Landers, but now they’ve stretched their lead to eight games and are slowly consolidating the top spot.