The biggest concern for the Kia Tigers this season is the starting team. In particular, the performance of the foreign pitching duo, who have to show stable inning digestion and overwhelming pitching, is the most painful.
Adonis Medina, who is already one of the foreign pitchers, is virtually on the verge of being kicked out. Medina pitched in 12 games this season, going 2-6 with a 6.05 ERA, 36 strikeouts and 29 walks with a WHIP of 1.60. Of his 12 appearances, he made only three quality starts. The patience of the KIA bench toward Medina, which was unable to cure chronic anxiety about ball control, was finally exhausted.
KIA canceled Medina from the first-team entry on June 22. KIA, which has already started looking for a replacement foreign pitcher, has even moved to the United States with Shim Jae-hak, the head of the team, and is closely examining the situation in the foreign market.
KIA included Thomas Panoni, who played for the team last year, as a candidate. Panoni was assigned a nomination following his recent major league call-up. However, KIA first turned its attention to Taiwan, not to Panoni, where the future situation was unclear.
According to local news on July 2, KIA is known to have shown interest in recruiting Mario Sanchez, a member of the Tungyi Lions of the Taiwan Professional Baseball League (CBPL). The CPBL Stats official Twitter account said on the 2nd that the KIA club had signed a contract with Mario Sanchez, who played for the CPBL Tungi Lions.
A KIA official said, “Mario Sanchez is one of the recruiting candidates. However, the contract has not been finalized yet.”
Born in Venezuela in 1994, Mario Sanchez is a right-handed pitcher with a height of 185 cm and a weight of 75 kg. As a member of the Tungi Lions in the 2023 season, he has achieved excellent results with 8 wins, 1 loss, 1.44 ERA, 42 strikeouts and 11 walks in 10 games (9 starts). If Mario Sanchez joins the team, it is expected to be a great help in stabilizing the starting lineup.
In fact, not only Medina, but another foreign pitcher, Sean Anderson, continues to show an ambiguous pitch flow. Anderson pitched in 14 games (79 innings) this season and went 4-7 with a 3.76 ERA, 74 strikeouts and 26 walks with a WHIP of 1.29. The record number of quality starts is 8.
Anderson showed relatively improved pitching in the four games he pitched after returning from the Futures team. He also pitched quality starts in the last three consecutive games.
However, what the KIA club wants from Anderson is pitching like an ‘overwhelming first starter’. It is difficult to say that Anderson showed pitching like a ‘league ace’ if you look closely at not only the results but also the pitching contents.토토사이트주소
Anderson shows a ‘two-pitch’ type of pitching with a fastball and a slider. His occasional curveball and changeup are not used as meaningful decision pitches. Because the breaking ball that falls into the bell is not sharp, the so-called ‘one timing’ ball is often caught by the opponent’s bat. In last Sunday’s game, Kim Hyun-soo hit a timely hit and Park Dong-won hit a home run.
The fact that the fastball and slider are not formed low is also the reason Anderson suffers from more headaches. This is because the probability of getting a long hit increases as the main pitching command is mainly formed in the high zone. In many ways, it is Anderson’s pitching style that makes it difficult to manage the game as the innings progress.
In this way, Anderson’s deterioration into a ‘Gireuk’ is a worse scenario from the perspective of KIA, which is having difficulty recruiting Medina substitute foreign pitchers. In the end, ‘Gwangju Thor’ has to show the pitching of the overwhelming first starter that was originally expected to be able to rebound in the second half. I wonder if Anderson will succeed in rebounding with the new foreign pitcher, overcoming the problem of two-pitch limitations and command anxiety.