*Article originally published here on Medium.com*
As MLB Opening Day rapidly approaches, baseball action continues in the KBO. Most of the teams have hit 60 games played and playoff tiers are starting to come into focus. The KIA Tigers currently sit in fourth-place at 33–27 while the Doosan Bears are holding onto the second-place spot at 36–26.
As the KIA Tigers kicked off a series with the Doosan Bears last night, Aaron Brooks put on a masterful display of pitching to propel the Tigers to a 4–2 with over Doosan. Brooks allowed just two runs over eight innings, holding the powerful Doosan lineup to almost no hard-hit balls.
Brooks has been phenomenal for KIA all season, including in the first start of his that I saw back in early June against Lotte. His ERA of 2.52 was 5th in the KBO entering today while his FIP of 3.00 was 2nd. He does a phenomenal job of throwing strikes walking just 1.68 hitters per nine innings resulting in a K/BB ratio of 4.71, good for 4th in the KBO. He allows very little hard contact, with an HR/9 of 0.36, 3rd in the KBO, and allowing a hard-hit rate of just 11%, the best in the KBO among pitchers with 125+ at-bats against.
The 30-year-old RHP continued that success against Doosan, the second-best offense in the KBO behind the NC Dinos. He scattered seven hits over his eight innings and was extremely efficient, only throwing more than 15 pitches in an inning twice. He induced 15 groundouts and 5 flyouts, allowing just a 7% hard-contact rate, coming on one flyout and one single. Beyond that, everything else was hit relatively softly as he repeatedly gave his defense the opportunity to turn double plays and field pop-outs.
Brooks entered the game with a 7.92 K/9 and had a whiff rate of 26% back in June when I saw him, but he only struck out two batters and forced a 12.7% whiff rate. Doosan always does a phenomenal job of putting the ball in play with the fewest team strikeouts in the KBO, but Brooks adapted spectacularly to inducing groundballs. Doosan does have the most GIDP in the KBO and Brooks did exploit that effectively.
Brooks worked with 5 pitches against the Bears. He threw his sinker up in the zone and used his four-seam fastball for a strike. In terms of offspeed stuff, he threw his curveball in the zone, while locating his changeup on the outside part of the zone and his slider breaking in against left-handed hitters.
Brooks’ used his sinker, slider, and changeup 85% of the time, with his sinker and changeup easily his best pitches against Doosan. His sinker, thrown 40% of the time, averaging around 93 mph, touching 95. Brooks worked it side-to-side in the upper part of the zone, maximizing the side-to-side movement that he was getting on it. He’d commonly throw the sinker up-and-in to LHH only for it to break and catch the upper part of the zone at the last second. After that, he’d come right back with his changeup, around 85 mph, breaking hard to Brooks’ arm-side and away from Doosan’s eight left-handed hitters.
Both his changeup and fastball were moving extremely well side-to-side; at times, it seemed like Brooks had the baseball moving wherever he wanted at the end of a string with some of the sharp movement that he was creating. It was a masterclass in using a sinker and changeup to attack hitters and completely stymied the Bears’ ability to square the ball up.
Brooks used his slider about 20% of the time, throwing it around 87–88 mph with great effectiveness. It’s a tight slider, with not a lot of horizontal movement towards an LHH, but, when compared with the arm-side run that he had on his sinker/changeup, it must’ve looked extremely different. He threw it inside against the lefties and down in the zone, a really effective placement after working the up and outside areas with his sinker/changeup combination. His curveball and four-seam fastball were used rarely and mostly as a change of pace as his sinker and changeup were dominant.
Brooks liked to open up at-bats with that sinker darting back over the plate, leading to his awesome 73% first-pitch strike rate. His slider was his secondary pitch early on in the game, but the 2nd/3rd time through the order, he started throwing his changeup more. With the late arm-side run that he creates with both his sinker and changeup, he induced swings and misses and a lot of miss-hits from Doosan. He spun the ball extremely well against the Bears and it showed.
*Stats from FanGraphs.com, myKBO.com, Sports Info Solutions, and the official KBO website*