He’s the best starter in the country…Ahn Woo-jin returns with his first big hit of the season, a deadly triple.
Korea’s top starting pitcher Ahn Woo-jin (Kiem) collapsed after deliberately hitting four pitches. In the game where Ahn Woo-jin took the mound, the first intentional four-ball operation of the season came out, and this decision was defeated.
The match against LG on the 2nd was 꽁머니지급 considered an unlucky day for Ahn Woo-jin. He gave up only three hits and two walks until the sixth inning and did not lose a point, but the game went to a 0-0 draw. And for the first time, Ahn Woo-jin’s season performance in the seventh inning, one intentional four-ball went up.
He was Kiwoom’s adventurer who skipped Park Dong-won at second and third bases with no outs and chose to play against Park Hae-min. The result was a three-run triple. All three runners stepped home to a ball over the height of the right fielder, and Park Hae-min advanced to third base. Kiwoom eventually lost 3-6 and lost four consecutive games.
Everything got twisted back and forth on purpose. First of all, the problem was that it became a situation with two single hits and runners on second and third base with no outs. Center fielder Lee Ju-hyung’s throw to prevent first baseman Oh Ji-hwan from advancing to third base led to Moon Bo-kyung’s additional advance. Against Park Dong-won, the ball count was 3-0, and he was driven to the batting count. The opponent I met with the bases loaded with no outs was Park Hae-min, who had a career-high batting average of 0.482 (13 hits in 27 at-bats).
The ball hit by Park Hae-min could not be a triple. As he was not a long hitter, outfielders were in front of him, but the ball flew over the head of the right fielder.
Ahn Woo-jin had 7 wins and 6 losses in 19 games until the match against LG in Jamsil on the 2nd. When he took the mound, his team’s performance was 10 wins, 1 draw, and 8 losses. He remained just over 50%. Due to poor scoring support with an average of only 3.2 points, they often failed to win even after throwing well. This seems to be the background of the game’s scoreless run on the 2nd, which led to an intentional four-ball full base with no outs.
It was a disappointing result for Ahn Woo-jin and Kiwoom until the sixth inning. On this day, LG’s starting pitcher was Lee Jung-yong, who continued to throw only as a bullpen pitcher after his professional debut and changed his position to a starting pitcher only in the middle of this season. Before the game on the 2nd, he had never pitched five innings in the starting lineup.
However, Kiwoom’s batters gave Lee Jung-yong a scoreless quality start in six innings. In the fifth inning, he had a chance to get second base with no outs, but failed to save it.
Meanwhile, Ahn Woo-jin’s last intentional fourth pitch was also against LG. On August 27 last year, an intentional four-ball operation came out in the eighth inning against LG in Jamsil to overcome the crisis with two outs and second base. Like this time, it was Ahn Woo-jin’s first intentional four pitches of the 2022 season. However, the operation was successful at this time. Ahn Woo-jin sent Yoo Kang-nam out with a strikeout, a not-out wild pitch, to the full base with two outs, but induced a fly ball to center field in the match against Park Hae-min.