*This article was originally published here on Medium.com*
Major League Baseball resumed play the last two days, but in Korea, the KBO keeps on playing. Teams are beginning to approach 70 games played and playoff races are starting to shape up. On Saturday, the 6th-place Samsung Lions faced off against the 3rd-place KIA Tigers.
Ben Lively started his 6th game of the season for the Samsung Lions and his six innings of one-run ball weren’t enough for the Lions to beat the KIA Tigers who won 8–2, scoring big after Lively exited the game. Lively dealt with numerous injuries to start this season and has just recently returned to the mound. His results so far have been dismal, with a 4.91 ERA and 6.03 FIP, but he was much better in 2019 for Samsung, posting a 3.95 ERA and 3.19 FIP in 57 innings, along with a 9.16 K/9 and 2.05 BB/9 rate. Today’s start against KIA was a big step towards reclaiming that form for Lively.
Lively was excellent against the Tigers, holding them to five baserunners (four hits and one walk) over his six innings. Their lone run against him came on the hardest-hit ball he allowed all night, a double off of the wall that scored a run. That’s important because Lively did a phenomenal job of limiting hard contact all game, only allowing one hard-hit ball out of 13 balls in play. His 62% soft-contact rate is phenomenal (tops in MLB last year was Jack Flaherty at 23.6%) and he kept the ball primarily on the ground, inducing six ground outs versus just three flyouts.
Against KIA, Lively threw five different pitches. He threw both a four-seam fastball, around 90.2 mph and a sinker that came in a tick slower at about 89.9 mph. His sinker was his most frequently used pitch, throwing it around 41% of the time and his fastball about 20% of the time.
He paired his fastball combo with three different secondary pitches, a curveball, a slider, and a rare changeup. His curveball was his best secondary offering, coming in around 75 mph and being thrown about 20% of the time. The curveball didn’t have a crazy amount of vertical break, but the velocity difference between it and his slider made it successful. His slider was around 83 mph, being thrown about 13% of the time and had a pretty tight shape, with little extra side-to-side or up-and-down movement. Lively only threw his changeup about 7% of the time at 83 mph. The changeup had a decent amount of arm-side run and he primarily used it against left-handed hitters (LHH).
Overall, Lively did a pretty good job of attacking the strike zone and around the edges of the zone. His 61% strike rate was about average, but he did throw a first-pitch strike around 64% of the time. That was a big key to getting his eight strikeouts, as was his whiff rate of 23% (a 23% whiff rate is about average in MLB. Zack Wheeler and Jose Berrios posted whiff rates of 23.1% and 23.4% respectively in 2019). His best swing and miss pitch is his sinker, with its arm-side drop as it approaches the plate and was particularly effective up in the zone. His four-seam-type fastball was used in and on the edge of the zone as a strike pitch.
Lively paired that with his curveball, which he located for a strike against LHH and used as a chase pitch and on the edge of the zone against RHH. He threw his slider in against LHH and away from RHH, playing it as a similar pitch to his sinker, but breaking the other direction. His changeup was thrown exclusively against LHH, but it was more of a change of pace than anything else.
Overall, against LHH, Lively worked inside and up in the zone, utilizing his sinker to get swings and misses and his curveball to steal strikes in the zone. Against RHH, he primarily worked down in the zone with his curveball and slider, elevating his sinker/fastball to miss bats. It was an effective combination and allowed Lively to hold KIA’s offense in check over six innings.
*Stats from myKBO.com and FanGraphs*