The 3rd ‘Team No-Hitter’ in KBO history!
A long-haired ace has appeared in Busan. The powerful hitter SSG Landers almost got his hands on the “perfect” pitch, but it is Lotte’s hope that it is shaken in name and reality.
The pitching on this day was the best ever. The opponent was SSG Landers, the defending champion and running second in the league this season.
This year, the team ranked first in all home runs (83, second place Doosan with 63), and the appearance of a’home run factory’ is still the same. Starting with Choo Shin-soo from the major leagues, Choi Jeong, who is 2nd in homers this year (20) and who is about to top the career record (17 gap with Lee Seung-yeop, 1st place), Choi Joo-hwan, who tied for 3rd in homers (16), and Hanyu Island Choi Ji-hoon, Park Seong-han, etc. It’s a batting line full of hitters.
However, Wilkerson consistently overwhelmed the SSG lineup with ball combinations and control using various breaking balls, including cutters, changeups, sliders, and curves, as well as a fastball of up to 148km. In particular, the pattern of setting the count with a cutter touching the border line and winning with a four-seam worked well.
SSG suffered the humiliation of “perfect” as not a single player got on base until the sixth inning. The player who cut it off was, of course, 41-year-old veteran Choo Shin-soo. In the second half, Choo Shin-soo, who had a batting average of 50%, got a walk from Wilkerson and recorded his team’s first on-base hit. It didn’t lead to a hit or a run. Jihoon Choi’s sacrifice bunt and Choi Joo-hwan’s center fielder fly ball pushed Choo Shin-soo to third base, but Wilkerson finished the seventh inning by striking out the last batter Choi Jung.
It was not easy to take the mound in the eighth inning as he pitched twice a week and threw 95 balls in two consecutive games following the last NC match. In the end, Lotte replaced Wilkerson with Koo Seung-min in the eighth inning. In the bottom of the seventh inning, leadoff hitter Goodrum’s double play raised hopes for the winning pitcher, but he swallowed his disappointment by failing to score at the bottom of the seventh inning with one out and third base.
After Lotte pinch hitter Junghoon Lee got on base with a hit in the bottom of the eighth inning, pinch hitter Yoon Dong-hee scored a timely winning run with one out and second base, and Kim Won-joong allowed Choo Shin-soo a walk in the bottom of the ninth inning, but blocked him without losing a point and made his 19th save.
With this, Lotte achieved the 3rd ‘Team No-Hitter’ in KBO history on this day, doubling the joy.
When Wilkerson entered Korea, he also became a hot topic for his appearance resembling Casey Kelly, the long-haired ace of the LG Twins. Kelly is a long-lived foreign pitcher who has been active for five seasons at LG until this year. He is a bit sluggish this season, but he is an all-time leading foreign player who has won 48 total wins for 4 years and double-digit multiplier for 4 consecutive years until last year.
If you want to pick Lotte’s best foreign pitchers of all time, you can pick Shane Yuman, Brooks Rayleigh, and Dan Strayley. However, unlike Yooman-Raylee, who experienced fall baseball, Strayley lags behind in that he did not. Will Wilkerson be able to lead Lotte, who is sluggish in the second half, into fall baseball?
SSG Kirk McCarty, who had a head-to-head match against Wilkerson that day, also played a superb pitcher’s match in front of 8,162 baseball fans who visited the field in the heat with a life style of 7 innings, 3 hits, 1 walk and no runs. The nine strikeouts are a personal record.
CREATED BY: 먹튀검증