KT Wiz pitcher Feierabend suffers low run support
KT Wiz pitcher Ryan Feierabend / Courtesy of KT Wiz
His quality starts forgotten for struggling KT Wiz batters
By Kang Hyun-kyung
KT Wiz pitcher Ryan Feierabend has been going through a similar fate that burned SK Wyverns Merrill Kelly last season ― their quality starts are forgotten for their weaker bullpen or low run support.
Feierabend tops the ERA rankings with 2.78, followed by Lotte Giants Park Se-woong (3.06) and Doosan Bears’ Jang Won-jun (3.09) and is the league’s only pitcher whose ERA stands in the 2.0 range.
Feierabend is one of the top pitchers in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) League but his record doesn’t reflect his solid pitching. But he has collected only eight wins and nine losses so far this season, and his name is not on the top 10 pitchers’ rankings by win-loss record.
The Wyverns’ Kelly went through the same frustrations last year. Despite his top-level pitching, he failed to secure wins in the double-digits. Kelly pitched in 31 games last year and 22 of them were quality starts. But he only secured nine wins with eight losses.
His team’s relatively weak bullpen allowed opposing teams to score runs after Kelly left the mound, preventing him from collecting more wins. Baseball fans taunted the American-born pitcher with “Kelly Cries,” but the heckling has died down this season. Kelly has had 13 wins with five losses out of 18 quality starts in the 25 games he has pitched. He places third in the rankings of pitchers by wins and ranks second in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which shows a pitcher’s contribution to the team.
For KT Wiz starter Feierabend, the source of the problem is his team’s lower run support. Run support is a baseball statistic showing how many runs are scored by the pitcher’s team when he starts. KT Wiz batters struggled to score more runs than opposing teams and this contributed to fans forgetting about Feierabend’s several quality starts.
“If Feierabend had run support as high as that of pitchers on the top-ranked teams such as the Kia Tigers or the Doosan Bears, his record this season would have turned out very differently,” baseball analyst Heo Gu-yeon said. “He could have collected 15 wins or more. His pitching this season has been great but he’s not as lucky as the pitchers on other teams who have high run support from their batters. His low ERA shows his pitching this season has been solid. His win-loss record, however, reflects he didn’t get sufficient run support from the batters.”
Feierabend pitched eight scoreless innings in a game against the Samsung Lions on Sunday, allowing only a single in the sixth inning. After he left the mound, the Lions scored three runs. KT Wiz barely won 4-3 with two home runs, ending their five-game losing streak.
Feierabend clinched his eighth win on Sunday, 85 days after his seventh win on June 3 against the Lotte Giants. Before the showdown with the Lions, he pitched in 13 games and eight of them were quality starts, which means he allowed only three runs in six or more innings pitched. But eight of his quality starts became lost opportunities after his team was defeated in those games.
His pitching in his early seasons in the KBO League was not as solid it has been this season, partly because of injury.
He initially joined the KBO League in 2015 as a pitcher for the Nexen Heroes and finished the season with 13 wins and 11 losses with a 4.67 ERA. After the season, he underwent surgery after suffering a fractured forearm.
He joined KT Wiz in July last year and won seven games with 13 losses. His ERA was 4.45.
His lowered ERA this season reflects his full recovery from surgery.
His ball control was solid in the game against the Lions on Sunday. He threw 97 pitches ― 44 fastballs, 25 knuckleballs, 22 changeups and six curves.
Baseball analyst Heo said the American-born pitcher held a tight grip on the Lions’ pitchers all during the eight innings he mainly pitched his knuckleballs. A knuckleball is a pitch thrown to minimize the spin of the ball in flight making its motions unpredictable.
“He’s a knuckleballer and his knuckleballs that day were very powerful,” he said. “Korean batters have a difficult time when dealing with knuckleballers because the pitch moves in unpredictable ways. So players here say they know the ball is coming but they are helpless because the ball is so erratic that it is more difficult for batters to hit it.”