The starting pitching staff of the WBC Japan national team is considered to be the highest level among participating countries. Shohei Otani (LA Angels), who is the top player in the major leagues in terms of pitching, Yu Darvish (San Diego), who had the best season of his life last year by winning 16 wins at the age of 35, Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Orix), NPB’s best ace who won the Sawamura Award for two consecutive years, and perfect last year World-class pitchers, including Roki Sasaki (Chiba Lotte), who achieved the game, form a four-man starting rotation.
Of course, they throw a terrifying ball. It’s amazing from speed. Ohtani broke his career high last year with an average fastball of 156.6 km/h. Among the pitchers who filled the required innings last year in the big leagues, only two pitchers who were faster than Ohtani were Sandy Alcantara (157.5km) and Gerrit Cole (New York Yankees, 157.4km), winners of the NL Cy Young Award. And Sasaki threw the ball faster than all of them.
According to head coach Hideki Kuriyama and pitching coach Masato Yoshii, the Japanese national team will start each of these four players in the first round. In the first round, two of them will not be put into one game at the same time. (Coach Yoshii expressed his intention to use Darvish and Ohtani together in the quarterfinals.)
This idea can open up a little hope for our national team. 바카라사이트
A well-known hypothesis in the baseball world. The hitter is more sensitive to the ‘relative speed’ compared to the previous pitcher than the pitcher’s ‘absolute speed’. Let’s assume that pitcher A has an average fastball speed of 155 km/h and pitcher B has an average speed of 148 km/h. When facing A, who came out as a starter, and B, who is slightly slower than him, comes out as a relief, the batter feels that B’s ball is ‘easy’.
Looking at the absolute value of speed, B is also a fastball pitcher, but it seems easier than A who throws a ‘light speedball’. Conversely, if B starts, A’s relief ball appears faster in the eyes of the batter. So, professional baseball teams around the world try to have a ‘light speed ball pitcher’ in their bullpen. This is because the relief pitcher knows that it is difficult if the ball is slower than the starting pitcher.
Korean baseball fans have also experienced and cheered the effect of this hypothesis ‘nationally’. In the 2015 Premier 12, the Korean national team was humiliated twice by Ohtani Shohei. During 6 innings in the first game of the group stage and 7 innings in the semifinals, they did not score a single point. He was so overpowered that he struck out a whopping 21 in 13 innings. In the 8th inning of the semifinals, where Japan led 3-0, Ohtani was substituted.
The next pitcher is Takahiro Norimoto. He played an active role as Rakuten’s ace and was an outstanding pitcher that year with a strikeout rate of 27%, ranking second behind Ohtani (31.6%). In the first match against Korea, he also allowed two scoreless innings. However, it was clear that it was not ‘Otani level’.
Norimoto’s average speed of direct purchase that year was 145 km/h. There was a clear gap with Ohtani’s 152.4 km. In the ninth inning of the national team, Norimoto, Yuki Matsui, and Hirotoshi Masui, who were noticeably slower than Ohtani, hit the balls with excitement and scored five runs, overturning the game. A come-from-behind victory that will go down in Korean baseball history was thus completed.
Let’s assume that the Japanese national team manages the starting lineup according to the above concept at this WBC. Korea will play against Japan in the second round of the first round on March 10th. In the early stages of the game, our national team’s batting line will struggle with the tremendous speedball thrown by one of the world’s best starting pitchers, the ‘Terrible Four’. However, the WBC has a ‘throw limit’ rule. No matter how good a starting pitcher is, he has to come down after throwing 65 pitches. In other words, a second pitcher appears in the fourth or fifth inning.
Most teams aiming for the semifinals or higher use ‘long relief’ as their second pitcher. This is because if you use too much bullpen personnel from the first round, you may end up in a tournament after the quarterfinals. That’s why most teams select a large number of starting agents and appoint them as ‘second pitchers’. The same goes for Japan.