Sports Nut

I’m Not Sure I Believe What I Just Saw 

Rany:

It’s funny, yesterday we were talking about Mariano Rivera, who throws nothing but fastballs yet is successful because his fastballs ain’t like nobody else’s.

Well, Byung-Hyun Kim doesn’t throw fastballs exclusively, but he, too, throws fastballs that ain’t like nobody else’s. And just as Rivera is essentially the only pitcher of his kind, so is Kim. For as long as I’ve been a baseball fan, submarine pitchers were junkballers who threw that way because when they were coming up, they just didn’t throw hard enough to get people out with fastballs (or anything else).

But Kim grew up in Korea, so nobody told him that guys who throw hard aren’t allowed to throw underhand. Then he gets to North America and discovers that none of the hitters have ever seen a rising fastball. I mean, people say that Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson and their ilk throw rising fastballs, but they don’t. Not really. Their fastballs just don’t sink as much as other pitchers’, so to the hitter they appear to be rising.

Kim’s fastballs really do rise, though, because he throws them from down low. The result is a lot of strikeouts: Over the last two seasons, 224 strikeouts in 169 innings, which is an awesome ratio that would make Kim at least moderately famous if he pitched in New York. In Game 4 Wednesday, he struck out five Yankees in his first two innings.

There’s another result, though … home runs. In those same 169 innings, Kim allowed 19 home runs (among only 110 hits). That’s not a huge number of bombs, but it’s more than you’d like your closer to give up. Over those same two seasons, Mariano Rivera has given up nine home runs in 156 innings. And that’s why Kim hasn’t been Arizona’s closer unless somebody’s hurt.

In Game 4, he failed, blowing a two-run lead in the bottom of the ninth. But what really surprised me was seeing Kim come out for the 10th, his third inning of work. Kim pitched three innings only once all season, and that was way back in early April. It showed an amazing amount of confidence (or was that desperation?) on Brenly’s part.

Obviously, it didn’t work out too well.