Ryu shaky in major league debut

Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Ryu Hyun-Jin throws against the San Francisco Giants during the third inning of a baseball game in Los Angeles, Tuesday. / AP-Yonhap

Dodgers lose 3-0 against Giants

By Kim Tong-hyung

Korea and Japan, representing a bitter sports rivalry tied in politics and history, displayed their top athletic exports on world baseball’s biggest stage Wednesday, with dramatically different results.

In his much-anticipated major league debut, bulky and shaky Korean veteran Ryu Hyun-jin showed he wasn’t ready to become the toast of Tinseltown just yet.

Hours earlier, Yu Darvish, the lean and mean Japanese ace of the Texas Rangers, delivered what could easily prove the league’s pitching performance of the year with six months left to play.

Ryu, 26, who signed a six-year, $36 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the winter, was underwhelming in his start against the reigning World Series champions San Francisco Giants, taking his first loss of the year in a 3-0 defeat at Dodgers Stadium.

Ryu, who went 98-52 with an era of 2.80 in seven Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) seasons, gave up three runs and 10 hits over 6 1/3 innings before being pulled for Ronald Belisario in the top of the seventh.

Darvish, the second-year major leaguer, couldn’t have been more dominant, taking a perfect game into two outs in the ninth inning and fanning 14 Houston Astros along the way. His fastball-slider combo was downright devastating and doubled as an audacious message that he will be in the Cy Young conversation this year.

Throughout the illustrious history of the club, the Dodgers have enjoyed a wealth of international stars including Fernando Valanzuela, Hideo Nomo, and of course, Park Chan-ho, Korea’s first baseball export to the America. For Ryu to have any chance at joining that cherished club, he will have to be a different pitcher than the one who faced the Giants.

Allowing three runs over six-plus innings isn’t anything to be ashamed of for a pitcher making his first start in the majors, against the world champions at that. And making snap judgments after one game in a 162-game season is probably not an exercise in intelligence.

Nonetheless, the Dodgers had to be alarmed to see how the Giant hitters reached Ryu’s pitches with such ease. Ryu brought something close to his best stuff ― a fastball that sat comfortably around 145 kilometers per hour and a changeup that would be rated as superb in any league ― and the Giants still made him look toothless.

Ryu gave up consecutive singles at the start of both the first and second innings and was rescued both times after a couple of hard-hit grounders bounced into double plays.

The third inning was the easiest for Ryu. He struck out Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner and, after Angel Pagan unsuccessfully attempted to stretch a single into a double, ended the inning by inducing a grounder from Marco Scutaro.

The Giants finally got on board in the fourth inning, with Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and Joaquin Arias hitting three consecutive singles off Ryu to make it 1-0.

Ryu managed to hold the Giants hitless in the fifth and sixth innings before the wheels came off in the seventh. After Arias reached first on a throwing error by Dodgers shortstop Justin Sellers, Ryu gave up a single to Andres Torres and a grounder to Brandon Crawford that advanced the runners to second and third.

Ryu was then relieved by Belisario, who induced a grounder from Bumgarner, but another throwing error by Sellers allowed both Ariras and Torres to score.

The three runs were more than enough for Bumgarner, who limited the Dodgers to two hits over eight innings for his first win of the season.

Ryu led Korean professional baseball several times in strike outs with his fastball-changeup combo. However, his fastball, which doesn’t have much movement or sink, isn’t probably an above-average pitch at the major league level, considering the superior bat speed and plate coverage of the hitters. And obviously, a changeup without the threat of a fastball isn’t much of a threat at all.

Ryu seemed to be aware of this against the Giants, using his fastball to paint the outer part of the strike zone instead of attacking hitters in the hands the way he did in Korea. But the Giant hitters weren’t chasing Ryu’s pitches out of the zone and swung happily at his subpar breaking pitches, including a super-slow curveball that could be dangerous against big league hitters.

It remains to be seen whether Ryu can successfully retool himself if he doesn’t miss bats in America as frequently as he did in Korea. A decline in strikeout rates could be alarming for Ryu, who doesn’t have the quality breaking pitches and pinpoint command to become a groundball pitcher.