Attention is focusing on whether Ahn Woo-jin (23, Kiwoom Heroes), who has established himself as the best ‘Doctor K’ among professional baseball pitchers in Korea, will change the record for the most strikeouts in a season this year.
Ahn Woo-jin made his ninth start of the season against the Doosan Bears on the 18th, striking out 7 in 6 innings, allowing only 2 runs and harvesting his 3rd win of the season.
In particular, the 5th inning against Park Gye-beom, Yang Eui-ji, and Yang Seok-hwan, the 14th consecutive three-pitch strikeout record, and the scene of overcoming the crisis was a masterpiece.
An Woo-jin increased the number 안전놀이터of strikeouts for the season to 73, widening the gap with second place Eric Peddy (NC Dinos, 63) to 10.
An Woo-jin, who recorded 69 strikeouts in 9 games since the opening of last year, got 4 more strikeouts in the same number of games this year. If he pitches in 30 games like he did last year, he is poised to catch 243 by simple calculation.
Last year, during nine games, he had only one double-digit strikeout game, but this year, he has already played four games with 10 strikeouts or more.
Standing tall as the best pitcher in the KBO League, An Woo-jin struck out 224 in 2022, setting a new record for all-time domestic pitchers in the inner ear category.
Ariel Miranda (former Doosan) from Cuba left in 2021, just one short of the most strikeouts (225) in a single season in the KBO League.
The speed of accumulating strikeouts is faster than last year, and expectations are growing that Miranda’s record will be surpassed this year.
The fight for the strikeout title is more interesting because there is a good competitor named Peddy, who is holding a K-show comparable to An Woo-jin with a new type of pitch called ‘Sweeper’ that curves sharply horizontally.
Peddy, who pitched in 8 games this year, caught 11.34 strikeouts per 9 innings, closely chasing Ahn Woo-jin (11.46), the first in this category.
If the pace of the two pitchers, who strike out an average of 7 to 8 per game, continues to the end, there is a possibility that the fight for the strikeout king will sink into the fog.
An Woo-jin and Peddy are continuing their competition to become the best pitchers this year, ranking first and second as pitchers with 2.49 and 2.25, respectively, in the WAR rankings of Statties, a baseball statistics site.
Ahn Woo-jin uses a fast ball with an average speed of 153.9km per hour as his main weapon, and Peddy, who is a major leaguer in the American professional baseball league, is a sweeper unfamiliar with domestic batters and has been on a winning streak in the early days of his KBO league debut.