Baseball’s NC Dinos pitcher Lee Jae-hak has won two consecutive games with a Quality Start Plus (QS+) pitching performance.
Lee started the game against LG at Changwon NC Park on Tuesday and pitched seven innings of one-run ball with five hits, one walk and six strikeouts to earn the win. It was the second straight game with a QS+, following his seven innings of one-run ball against Doosan on April 24 (win). It has been 2212 days since Lee posted back-to-back QS+ games since April 4, 2018, when he allowed one run in 7 innings against Samsung Electronics and two runs in 7⅔ innings against KT.
Lee Jae-hak’s dominant performance helped NC win 8-0 and hand LG its second shutout of the season.
Lee gave up a double to Kim Hyun-soo in the bottom of the first inning, but struck out Austin on a fastball outside the zone (144km) to end the inning. The second and third innings were back-to-back strikeouts. Park Hae-min singled to lead off the fourth inning, but Kim Hyun-soo grounded out to first base to end the inning.
With the score 7-0 in the fifth, Moon Bo-kyung singled and Kim Bum-seok walked to put runners on first and second with no outs. He struck out Oh Ji-hwan and Park Dong-won on consecutive pitches with his changeup and got Shin Min-jae to fly out to center field on a fastball to end the inning.
He retired the first three batters he faced in the sixth inning and gave up a leadoff double to Austin in the seventh, but tagged out the runner who tried to tag up to third on Moon’s fly ball to right field on a precise relay play between the right fielder and second baseman.
“I’m glad we were able to continue our winning streak,” Lee said after the match. It feels good to get off to a good start in the first week,” Lee said after the win. “I was able to throw a long inning because of the low pitch count, and I think I did a good job of pitching efficiently,” he added.
It’s no secret that Lee is a two-pitch pitcher with a fastball and changeup. However, recently, Lee has been throwing his cutter more often. On this day, he didn’t throw many cutters because LG had a lot of lefties. Out of 90 pitches, he threw 33 fastballs, 44 changeups, 11 cutters, and two curves.
Lee said, “I decided to use my cutter a lot, just like in the last game. Today, I had a little less timing on my pitches, but I think Se-hyeok was able to give me the cutter and curve sign at the right time, so I faced a little more variety than before,” Lee explained. “There are a lot of lefties, so the percentage of cutters has 먹튀검증 decreased a little bit.”
“I don’t think the opposing hitters thought much of the cutter, so when I mixed it up, they didn’t react well, and it would be good if I could throw it more in the future,” Lee said. .
I’ve been practicing my cutter a lot, but I haven’t been able to throw it confidently on the mound because I haven’t tried it in a real game. He has been throwing the cutter a lot since the 24th against Doosan.
“I didn’t throw it much at the beginning of the season. I had a good changeup and wanted to throw it, but then I switched my thinking a bit and tried to mix it up from the last game.” ‘Se-hyeok talked to my brother and I took more of it (against Doosan), and as the results went well, I gained more confidence, so I think I used it well today,’ he said.
Lee Jae-hak is no stranger to LG. Last year, he went 1-0 with a 0.82 ERA (11 innings, 2 runs, 1 earned run) in two games against LG. This year, he took the loss against LG in Jamsil on March 3, giving up four runs (one earned) on seven hits in five innings, but he redeemed himself perfectly that day.
When asked why he was so strong against LG, Lee said, “I don’t know. I’m throwing as if all teams are the same, and I think the results are coming out well,” he said.