Chan-Ho Staggering away from Home

Park Chan-Ho`s (28, LA Dodgers) nickname is `Victor at home only`. In other words, his records are not good in the road trip games.

His `Road Trip Game Syndrome` continued on a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates held in PNC Park, Pittsburgh on August 10. From the first inning, Park allowed a triple to Nunes and earned several hits. At no out and a third base runner, he lost a run by infield grounder. Then after 2 outs, he yielded a homerun to Giles, losing a straight ball. It was the first homerun he earned in the first inning ever since 25 games in this season.

Worse than this, he lost runs right after Dodgers earned some chasing runs.

When the score was 1-2 against Dodgers with no out and 1st and 2nd base runners at the bottom of the fourth inning, Park was hit by a 3-run homerun from Wilson. After Dodgers won 3 runs at the first of the fifth inning, Park allowed multiple hits in a row at the bottom of the fifth inning and lost 2 runs, which led to his loss.

During the 5 innings, he obtained 6 strikeouts, but yielded 7 hits, including 2 homeruns with 7 runs. It was the worst pitching ever since a bad (3 1/3 inning, 8 hits, 7 runs) in a game against Oakland Athletics on July 14. It was probably because of the hot weather over 30 degree and his backache, his fastball was not so fast as 150 km/hr with no sharp curveball.

His season record is 11 wins - 8 losses now and his ERA went up to 3.12 from 2.83. After the game, Park said, ``I was not distracted but the curveballs were not good. The pitch Wilson hit a homerun was also a curveball. It was a bad day!``

Although the conditions are not good to such veteran player as Park, the multiple run loss is a disappointing. In particular, it must be a negative factor that there is a big difference between home and road trip games in terms of pitching quality. While his home game records are as excellent as 8 wins, 2 losses with ERA 1.72, he becomes an common pitcher in the road trip games (3 win, 6 loss, ERA 4.83), like a `Samson without hair`.

For other superstar pitchers, there is no distinction between home and road trip games in terms of pitching quality. For example, Randy Johnson shows 7wins-3losses (ERA2.45) at home and 8wins-2losses (ERA 2.35) at road trip games, while Curt Shilling also shows 9wins-4losses (ERA 3.16) at home and 7wins-1losss (ERA 2.78) at away games respectively.

For Park Chan-Ho, who is to be a superstar pitcher, he must overcome such `road trip game syndrome`.

Kim Sang-Soo ssoo@donga.com