This is the good version of Im Ki-young, getting called strikes and weakly hit outs. It’s been a few starts since we’ve seen him, but while making his first start since August 9th, Im faced the NC Dinos for the second time in a row and pitched a gem for the Kia Tigers. Over six innings, Im held NC’s powerful lineup to just one run and struck out eight batters, a far cry from his August 9th outing against the same Dinos where he allowed six runs in just over two innings of work.
Im had his next start in the rotation skipped and was able to get some much-needed rest. In 2019, Im threw 48.2 innings for Kia; heading into today’s game he was at 70.2 IP. He did throw 100+ innings in both 2017 and 2018, so it seems like he was injured in 2019, making fatigue a concern as the season continued. But after a few extra days of rest, Im looked sharp and arguably the best he has all season.
Im doesn’t throw very hard; with his sidearm release, his sinker averages about 85 mph, which gives him a small margin for error, especially against good teams like NC. He relies heavily on getting called strikes at the edge of the zone, which requires being sharp with his locations.
On the season, Im has a called strike rate of just 16% (including these two starts against NC). In his good start against NC, that rate was up to 18%. The other sizable change was how many bats Im missed in this second go against NC, with a whiff% of 30%, as opposed to just 18% over his last 265 pitches. At 18%, which includes this 30% start, Im has the third-lowest whiff rate in the KBO (minimum 265 pitches), whereas a 30% rate would rank second overall.
While I don’t expect Im to maintain a 30% whiff rate, with his arsenal, I expect him to land somewhere in the 20-22% range, which is plenty for him as long as he can get the called strikes that he needs. Fortunately, Im’s pitch arsenal lends itself to that approach. He throws three pitches out of his sidearm slot, a sinker, changeup, and slider. As you can see, he throws his sinker against both LHH and RHH, while reserving his slider for RHH and changeup for LHH.
With his sidearm release, Im gets a fantastic amount of horizontal break on his pitches, which lends itself to three things: 1) Getting calls on the edge of the zone with sinkers/changeups that cut back, 2) fooling hitters into bad swings, and 3) getting softly hit ground balls out of those bad swings. Those are the three things that went well for Im against NC today.
Today, he did a better job of locating his sinker moving away from left-handed hitters and coming back to hit the outside edge of the zone against righties. He also did a really good job of pounding his changeup down in the zone which, when contrasted with his sinker, is a tough combination to get a read on, as evidenced by the 43% whiff rate and every single changeup that was put in play resulting in an easy out. With his slider, Im was consistently throwing it down and away from RHH, resulting in both called strikes and swinging strikes.
When the Dinos did manage to put the ball in play, it didn’t go very far. Of the 12 balls in play that Im allowed, only two were hit hard, a fly out by No Jin-hyuk and a groundout from Na Sung-bum. Seven of the remaining 10 balls in play were softly hit, resulting in easy groundouts and pop outs.
Im Ki-young made a triumphant return against NC today, showcasing his ability to get weak contact and easy outs. A few extra days of rest seem to have done him some good and I’d expect him to settle back into the fairly reliable rhythm that he had been in before hitting a few bumps in the road. He’s by no means an ace for Kia, but he’s a solid third option in the rotation.