LG-SK “Position Breakdown” on the Mound

At this year’s Golden Lion Pennant National High School Baseball Tournament, which ended with Deoksu IT High nabbing the champion title, there was no distinction between starting pitchers and closers.

On repeated occasions, starters descended the mound for a brief breather as a fielder, and then returned to the mound to put out fires at the last minute. Since most teams relied heavily on a single ace, they had no choice but to use the same players over and over again by switching them through different positions, especially at critical moments in the game.

These days, even professional baseball takes after high school baseball in this respect. A strong wave of “position breakdown” is blowing through the K-League, and the trend is particularly pronounced among teams that are struggling at the bottom of the league.

The LG Twins, mired in a season-record-setting seven-game losing streak as of July 1, switched “fireman” closer Jin Pil-joong into the starting lineup after some eleven months.

Jin joined the Doosan Bears in 1995 and went on to make 42 successful saves, the highest record for a single season. He became a free agent this year after his contract with the Kia Tigers ended, and donned the Twins uniform at a jaw-dropping salary of two billion won over four years.

However, his record this season has been a paltry four losses and twelve saves, with a 5.69 ERA. He gets sent in to put out fires, and ends up fueling them instead. The exasperated LG coaching staff sent Jin down to the minors for instruction as a starter. But his first outing as a starter, in the June 30 game against the Samsung Lions in Daegu, ended in a disastrous loss after he gave up five runs over three innings, including two homeruns, seven hits, and one walk. The Twins were forced to dispatch Jin to the minors once again, their hope in the “Jin Pil-joong card” utterly crushed.

The SK Wyverns, struggling in sixth place, is playing a sub-.500 season with 31 wins, seven draws, and 33 losses. In an attempt to change their luck, SK employed the unorthodox strategy of switching starter Umh Jung-wook to a closing position. On June 29, against the Kia Tigers, Umh came to the mound during the ninth inning in a precarious one-out, 5-4 situation and won his first save, dazzling batters with his 158-kilometers-per-hour fastball, the fastest in Korea. Before he could fully revel in the excitement of having slammed the door shut on the Tigers, Umh returned to the mound on July 2 as a starter against the LG Twins. When duty calls, one cannot quibble over positions, it seems.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com