Bouncing Back After Failure... Jae-eung Grabs ‘Dramatic 6th Victory’

Jae-eung Seo (26, New York Mets) finally escaped from the ‘long dark tunnel’. Seo came up to pitch as starter on the 17th in a home game against the Colorado Rockies at Shea Stadium New York and became the winning teacher his 10th attempt to achieve his 6th victory of the season.

He allowed 7 hits including 1 homerun during the 5 innings, giving up 4 runs, but the Mets batting lineup pumped out 14 hits with 13 runs. Seo’s ERA became 4.32.

Jae-eung Seo won the game 2 months after the game against Florida Marlines on June 18th. He went on to pitch in 9 games during the time and only lost 6 times.

Among his 76 pitches of the day, 54 of them were strikes. Using strong offensive pitching, he didn’t allow 1 base on balls throughout the game. His fastest ball marked 151km/h.

Jae-eung Seo allowed 1 run in the first inning, where Ron Belliard and Todd Helton made hits consecutively. However, he recovered stability after shutting down the 2nd and 3rd innings. Seo gave up 2 more runs allowing a solo homerun to Helton in the 4th,, a double and a triple to Helton and Belliard respectively in the 5th inning. He was substituted in the 6th.

The New York Mets comforted Seo by batting in 6 runs in the 2nd inning including Cliff Floyd and Timo Peres` 2 RBI hits individually.

Jae-eung Seo said, “My father encouraged me over the telephone by saying ‘Just do well what you should do’, which gave me fresh strength.” He also added that he got a blistered forefinger in the 2nd inning, but it did not affect him much while playing.

Meanwhile, Byeong-hyeon Kim took the plate in the 9th inning while his team (Boston Redsox) was leading the game 5-1 against the Seattle Mariners. He faced 4 batters and allowed one walk, but shut out the inning without a hit including 2 strikeouts.

Hee-seop Choi (24, Chicago Cubs) came up to the batter box as pinch hitter in the 9th inning against LA Dodgers, but was fanned back to the dugout.

Chang Jeon jeon@donga.com