LG Sidearm Jung Woo-young (24) is a pitcher who makes the batter in front of him uncomfortable. It is because he is so good at pitching that it is not easy to get a straight hit. Jung Woo-young’s batting average for the 2022 season is 0.230. However, at the moment he faced Jung Woo-young on the mound, there was no reason for his mind to become complicated because of the ball formulation. That’s because he throws a two-seam fastball 9 out of 10 pitches.
Last season, Jung Woo-young’s two-seam fastball usage rate reached 92% (based on Sports 2I). He had a four-seam fastball rate of 0.3 percent while throwing 7 percent of his sliders.
In the new season, it can often happen that a hitter who meets Jung Woo-young is disappointed if he only aims for a two-seam fastball like before. Jung Woo-young is preparing to raise the percentage of sliders in the new season.안전놀이터
Since last season, we have already been studying changes in our repertoire. Changes accelerated after a conversation with director Yeom Gyeong-yeop, who was newly appointed as the command tower.
Jung Woo-young said in an interview on the 4th, “The coach said, ‘Why do you throw only two seams like that, why do you make baseball so difficult?’ He told me to take more percentage of breaking balls,” he said.
In fact, when the two-seam timing started to match in a fight with an opponent batter, there were often cases where fouls continued to come out and only the number of pitches increased. It was also an effect of the increase in hitters who became accustomed to Jung Woo-young’s pitching pattern and pitching trajectory throughout the league. Jung Woo-young said, “Perhaps batters have figured it out to some extent, lately they tend not to hit the bat well for deep balls.”
Jung Woo-young knows the effect when the slider goes in well to some extent. For example, when a slider was thrown to a hitter who was only aiming for two-seam after two strikes, the hitter often failed to even swing and backed away. It doesn’t seem like a huge change. However, Jung Woo-young plans to drop the two-seam rate, which was over 90%, to the extent that it can be confirmed numerically.
Jung Woo-young is adjusting the slide step to be short and simple to increase the stealing rate. Regarding this, he said, “Rather than changing the form, it can be seen as using strength by moving briefly from the existing posture.”
Jung Woo-young was selected for the World Baseball Classic (WBC) team to be held in March and is raising his pace faster than usual. He will reveal the new things he is preparing for the new season little by little, starting with WBC.