Kia took the top spot on April 9th of this year and hasn’t lost it since. This is quite an accomplishment, as the team overcame a series of injuries to key players early in the season. The sixth-place team in last year’s regular season proved to be a dark horse in the championship race.
Kia has been playing well since then, even maintaining a winning percentage in the 7s for a while. The team was without one of its center fielders (Na Sung-beom), one of its starters (Lee Yi-ri), and one of its key pitchers (Lim Ki-young), as well as a number of other losses. By April 25, after 27 games, KIA had gone 20-7 (.741) and seemed to have solidified its dominance.
But even back then, KIA had an element of insecurity. It was just masked by the favorable numbers. Up until April 25, KIA led the league in team ERA (3.46), team batting average (.291), and team OPS (.826). We thought the two-hitter was doing well, but the wobbly metrics were already showing signs of trouble. There were two areas where the pitchers were struggling: walks, which is a pitcher’s natural ability, and defense, which is a different animal than offense.
Even when the team was doing well, KIA pitchers were walking a lot. At 3.98 walks per nine innings, they ranked eighth in this category. I look at pitching as a concept that includes the realm of luck. However, strikeouts and walks are not. They are the domain of the pitcher. The high number of walks meant that the mound had one potential source of anxiety going forward. The fielders also committed a total of 27 errors. That’s almost one per game. The most in the league. The offense may cycle, but the defense shouldn’t. That’s two records that don’t look like a first-place team.
Eventually, it seems to have sparked a chain reaction of late. Kia went 5-8 (.385) in 13 games over a 12-day span from April 26 to April 28, halting a good trend. This was despite the return of Park Chan-ho and Na Sung-beom, and the absence of any other notable power departures. The walks and errors were still a problem. The next 13 games are worse than the first 27 games.
Since April 26, KIA pitchers have walked 4.31 batters per nine innings, which ranks ninth in the league. While they still struck out quite a few batters early in the season, they’ve seen their strikeout rate drop to 1.54 K/BB ratio, the worst in the league. They’ve also 스포츠토토 committed 13 errors, nearly one per game. Pitchers walk a lot, fielders make mistakes. Hard-earned runs keep leaking out.
Even in the two games of the doubleheader against SSG on Dec. 12, the team managed to go 1-1, but they struggled with walks and errors at key moments. In Game 1, the team won 3-2 thanks to Kim Sun-bin’s precious game-winning solo home run, but an error by Park Chan-ho’s Kim Do-hyun cost them the game. Kim, who has been in good form lately, had a difficult game as he was hit by a pitch and made an error. Kia needed to show a more solid performance to advance to the must-win group, and closer Jung Hae-young came on in the eighth inning to record the final five outs.
In Game 2, walks and errors literally cost us the game. We had a comfortable lead until the middle of the game, but a mistake by Hong Jong-pyo and Kim Do-young in the middle of the game proved costly. They gave up 10 runs, six of which were earned. With two errors in two games, Kim has shown inexplicable difficulties in defense this year, especially in the field. It’s even more of a head-scratcher because he’s never been that good of a defender.
On the mound, he allowed a total of nine four-pitchers, and the runners piled up on the bases with four pitches and eventually came home in the 6-10 loss. The bullpen pitchers, including Lee Jun-young, Jang Hyun-sik, Kim Do-hyun, and Lee Hyung-beom, gave up a lot of four-pitchers, and even if they got the result, it was a frustrating game for fans to watch.
If this kind of performance continues, it is naturally difficult to maintain the top spot. In the history of the KBO and Major League Baseball, the team with the most errors has rarely won the championship. When a pitcher’s strikeout-to-walk ratio is broken, it’s inevitable that the mound will eventually crumble. It’s not a short-term game, it’s a 144-game race, and any luck you get now will eventually wear off. 4Fourth strikes and errors. If you don’t fix this problem soon, you could be in for a very difficult mid-season slump.