SEOUL– As the regular season heads toward the finish line in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), two teammates on a postseason-bound club find themselves at or near the top of meaningful pitching and hitting categories.
On the offensive side, Kiwoom Heroes outfielder Lee Jung-hoo, 24, is enjoying an MVP-worthy year, while his teammate on the mound, the 23-year-old An Woo-jin, has been the league’s most dominant starter so far.
Lee, the reigning batting champion in his sixth season, is once again leading the KBO with a .351 average, and he is closing in on his first RBI title with 113, seven ahead of Jose Pirela of the Samsung Lions.
Hardly known for power, Lee is tied for fifth in the league with a career-high 23 home runs — this in a season when offense across the league has been down and only 12 others have hit 20 or more.
Lee is also leading the way in on-base percentage (.422) and slugging percentage (.581). Pirela is 30 points behind Lee for second place in on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS).
Lee is also first in the KBO with 191 hits, 10 triples and 316 total bases.
The most remarkable stat for Lee may be this: he has drawn 64 walks but struck out only 32 times in 616 plate appearances. He has the league’s lowest strikeout rate (strikeouts per plate appearance) at 5.2 percent. This will be the fourth consecutive season in which Lee will finish with more walks than strikeouts.
Not surprisingly, Lee enjoys a sizable lead in advanced statistics, too. Per statistics website Statiz, Lee has put up 184.4 in weighted runs created plus (wRC+), a catch-all stat that measures a player’s offensive value based on the outcome of each plate appearance, adjusted for ballparks. The league average is set at 100, and Lee has been 84.4 percent better than the league average.
In weighted on-base average (wOBA), which accounts for how a player reaches base and assigns more value, for instance, to home runs than a walk, Lee leads the way at .450.
In both categories, Pirela is a distant second at 167.4 and .425.
In wins above replacement (WAR), as calculated by Sports 2i, the official statistics provider for the KBO, Lee leads all position players at 8.51, with Na Sung-bum of the Kia Tigers trailing him at 6.66.
Among pitchers, An Woo-jin is first with a 7.45 WAR, also per Sports 2i, with Kim Kwang-hyun of the SSG Landers a distant second at 5.70.
Kim is the league leader with a 1.99 ERA, with An in second place at 2.19. This is the only major category in which Kim is better than An, who has thrown more innings, given up fewer hits and home runs, allowed fewer base runners and struck out more batters.
An leads all hurlers with 189 innings pitched, .191 opponents’ batting average, 23 quality starts and 216 strikeouts. An is also first in fielding independent pitching (FIP) with 2.23.
FIP assesses a pitcher’s performance independent of the defense behind him, with a focus on events that the pitcher can control — strikeouts, unintentional walks, hit-by-pitches and home runs. A FIP that’s notably higher than ERA generally means the pitcher has been lucky, with some hard-hit balls going right to fielders behind him, for instance.
An’s FIP number suggests he has pitched about as well as he possibly could. Kim’s FIP is 3.12, more than a full point higher than his ERA, meaning he has been quite fortunate to have a sub-2.00 ERA so far and he is due for some regression.
In strikeouts, An sits nine shy of an all-time record set by Ariel Miranda of the Doosan Bears last year, but he may not get a chance to break that mark.
The Heroes have not yet played in October and will finish the season with a game on Thursday and then Saturday. Eric Jokisch, who last pitched on Sept. 27, will probably get the nod in Thursday’s game, with another starter taking the hill Saturday. Manager Hong Won-ki has previously spoken about the need to rest An, who has shattered his career high in innings, before the postseason.
Depending on where they finish in the standings, the Heroes could play their first postseason game next Wednesday. And they will try everything they can to have An ready for that game, even if it means the right-hander won’t take a crack at the strikeout record.
The Heroes have the luxury of employing the KBO’s best hitter and best starting pitcher. Lee and An have helped push the Heroes to the postseason, after few pundits gave them even a fighting chance of getting there earlier in the year.
Source: Yonhap News Agency