At the WBC in March, fans were shocked. Watching pitchers not only from the U.S. and Japan, but also from countries we looked down upon, threw faster balls than our own pitchers, I felt the "relative degeneration" of Korean baseball. That's why "speed" has become a hot topic.

At the right time, young pitchers such as Ahn Woo-jin, Moon Dong-joo, and Kim Seo-hyun sprayed a "light fastball" that exceeded 3 kilometers per hour and was not in the KBO League. The "speed revolution" that began in Major League Baseball more than 160 years ago and Nippon Professional Baseball about 10 years ago seemed to have begun in earnest in Korea. It seemed as if they had taken steps to close the gap between them and world baseball, which had been enormously widened.

But is that really the case?

There are only four Korean pitchers in the KBO League this season (among pitchers who have thrown more than five innings) who have averaged over 7 km/h. Ahn Woo-jin and Kim Seo-hyun, Moon Dong-joo and Ko Woo-seok are the protagonists.

Last year, however, the number of "5 km/h clubs" was much higher. In terms of four-seam fastballs alone, seven players and eight players hit "150 km/h," including Jung Woo-young, who threw a "light-speed sinker" with an average speed of 4.150 kilometers per hour.

Even if you lower the bar a bit, the situation is similar. Last year, 7 local pitchers averaged over 151 km/h on their fastballs. This year? It was reduced to 5 people. Even if you change the criteria, the overall picture is the same. There is no evidence that there are more fastball pitchers than there were last year. That's why the average fastball velocity across the league isn't any different from last year.


(The rest of the story is from the soup)