Chan-Ho Face the Toughest Counterpart

Park Chan-Ho (28, LA Dodgers) encounters the hardest match in this season at home game with the Colorado Rockies at 11: 30 am on 31st (Korea Time).

Although the Colorado Rockies ranked the last place in the West Division of the National League, it has the best offensive line-up in which the seven players out of nine starters has recorded over 0.300 BA.

Moreover, the starter of Colorado, Mike Hampton, is a great pitcher who has recorded 8 wins and 1 loss with 2.65 ERA in this season. Hampton became a free agent last winter and made a multi-year contract of $0.12 billion for eight years with Colorado.

Hampton made a major league debut in 1993, a year before Park. After recording 22 wins and 4 losses in Houston Astros in 1999, he had moved to New York Mets and settled in Denver this season.

Although the Coors Field in Denver, located in 1600m above the sea level, has been called as `the grave of pitchers`, Hampton has shown his best condition ranking second place in the wins-ranking and third place in the ERA ranking in the National League. He can pitch a superb change-up and various curves, and has a very accurate ball control.

Park Chan-Ho has shown the best record since his ML debut in 1994, 5 wins and 4 losses with 2.95 ERA from 11 starts. However, he fell behind Hampton.

But Park is not pessimistic because he has earned all of his five wins in the Dodgers Stadium and recorded 1.99 ERA at home. While the line-up comprised of Larry Walker, Todd Helton, and Jeff Cirillo recently has shown the best hitting performance, these three players recorded only 0.200-level BA against Park.

Therefore, the result of the game depends on how many runs the LA hitters can earn from Hampton.

Zang Hwan-Soo zangpabo@donga.com