In today’s KBO action, the Kiwoom Heroes faced off against the Lotte Giants, coming out on top by a score of WHATEVER thanks to a sterling performance from youngster Lee Seung-ho. Lee has been extremely up-and-down this season for Kiwoom, posting a 5.01 FIP and 5.35 ERA so far this season, but posted 7.2 scoreless innings against Lotte.
Earlier this week, I wrote about Lee Seung-ho and how important he is to Kiwoom’s sustained success this season and took a stab at trying to figure out why he’s been up-and-down every month. My determination was that Lee’s slider usage and placement was key to his success. In his successful starts that I’ve charted, he’s thrown his slider about 27% of the time and located it down in the zone. When he’s struggled, his slider usage has dropped to about 18-19% and he’s been throwing it in the middle of the zone. I recommended that he make sure he throws his slider more as his swing and miss pitch and use his changeup more against right-handed hitters (RHH).
Against Lotte, he continued his success, throwing 100 pitches over seven scoreless innings. As I watched, I was paying careful attention to how he was using his breaking pitches versus his fastball and I was thrilled by what I saw.
Lee only threw his 4-Seam fastball 42% of the time, down from the about 47% he had been in his last few starts. His changeup usage rocketed up, throwing it 19% of the time, up from 15%. His slider usage was actually a little bit down, only around 20% usage, but that’s likely because Lotte ran out a lineup with just two left-handed hitters so he threw his changeup more often. With his curveball usage at 19% as well, he threw his offspeed/breaking pitches 58% of the time, more than he used his fastball, exactly the kind of pitch distribution I wanted to see out of him.
This pitch distribution is ideal for Lee for a few reasons, which were demonstrated against Lotte. His 4-Seam, which only averages about 87 mph, is best used on the edges of the strike zone, getting called strikes. On the distribution of his pitch locations, you can see how Lee peppered the inside and outside edges of the zone with his fastball, especially against RHH. He got a called strike 19% of the time on his 4-Seam, which is how he likes to use it. Of pitches that I charted 85+ times, Lee Seung-ho’s 4-seam fastball ranks 4th in called strike% at 22.2%.
The pitch that leads the KBO in called strike% (among pitches charted 85+ times)? That would be Lee Seung-ho’s curveball at 27%, which he blew by with a 36.8% mark against Lotte. You can see how his curveball placement was on the outside edges of the zone, taking advantage of its sweeping motion to catch the edge of the zone.
That ability to paint the edges of the zone with his curveball and fastball sets up Lee’s swing-and-miss pitches, his slider, and changeup which sport Whiff%’s of 40% and 34.8% respectively, after this start. In general, his Whiff% was actually lower than his season average, only getting a 20% Whiff% compared to 23.8% after this start, but it didn’t matter.
Lee seems to have figured out that fastballs up and in or sliders away from LHH are good, as are changeups away from RHH. Not only does that result in swings-and-misses (a positive outcome), it also results in a lot of weak contact; of the balls in play that Lee allowed just 13%, were hit hard and 42% were hit softly, many of those weakly in the air, accounting for some of his nine flyouts.
I believe that Lee is starting to turn a corner and understands what his path to success is with his type of pitch arsenal. He’s shown the ability to be very good by using his offspeed/breaking pitches down in the zone and hunting called strikes with his fastball/curveball and the Kiwoom Heroes need him to continue that approach.