The Pitcher Just Hits Home Runs Well [EN]: Chapter 343

343. Two-Way Player (7)

It was already the fifth month of the season.

Jace Whittaker was slowly starting to admit it.

‘He’s on another level.’

How could he not admit it?

The kid, barely twenty years old, had already rewritten the league’s history.

Yes, he was on another level.

Sweat trickled down his back.

The score was 8-6.

One out, runners on first and third.

The batter at the plate was number nine, Louis Campbell.

He was the only player on the Dodgers, with a team batting average of .287, who was hitting below .230. But he couldn’t be ignored. He had already hit 11 home runs this season. It meant he had the power to send the ball over the fence at any moment.

The names of countless pitchers Jace Whittaker had watched growing up flashed through his mind.

Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Zack Greinke, Cole Hamels, Chris Sale, Adam Wainwright, CC Sabathia, Jon Lester, Jacob deGrom, and even Gerrit Cole.

They were truly the dominant pitchers of their era.

Yes, he had always wanted to be that kind of pitcher.

He knew now.

It was impossible.

Those who could become such great pitchers were different from the start.

Like that someone on another level.

So, had he given up?

Jace Whittaker gripped the ball again.

A dream is a dream because it’s difficult.

With a never-give-up attitude, Jace Whittaker threw the ball.

-Crack!!!!

Consecutive hits.

And Shohei Ohtani’s bases-clearing, three-RBI double.

Top of the 4th inning.

12-6.

Jace Whittaker walked off the mound, dejected.

***

“Ah…”

Damn it.

A sigh of frustration escaped me.

Like Shohei Ohtani had said after Game 1, the thought that we might really get swept crossed my mind.

Jace Whittaker’s pitches weren’t bad.

I’ve said it before, his repertoire is simple, and his timing is predictable, so he’s not a great starter who can handle multiple innings, but his stuff is good enough to be a top-notch reliever.

If he takes it one step further, he could be a setup man for a contender or even a closer for a mid-tier team.

So, it’s just that the Dodgers’ lineup is on fire right now.

Six of their nine starting hitters today are Latino. It might sound a bit racist, but I feel like Latino guys are very emotional. When they get hot, they really get hot.

“Soo-won, you can’t pitch today, right? Ah, would they let me go up early if I asked?”

A rhetorical question.

Domingo was a pitcher himself, so he knew the answer to this question better than anyone. It was just a lament expressing his frustration.

The manifestation of his desire to prevent a sweep at all costs.

I felt the same way. But to stop the Dodgers’ lineup right now, just a good pitcher wasn’t enough.

Dominant.

We needed a pitcher who could control the game. Like Domingo, who was talking to me, or Gerrit Cole, who was holding his forehead in the corner.

[Ah, Josh Clinton is coming to the mound. Josh Clinton was just called up from the minors yesterday to replace Stan Owens.]

[Top of the 4th. One out, runner on second. The score is 12-6. It’s a tough moment for the Yankees. This is…]

[It seems like manager Jeff Clark has made a difficult decision.]

Mop-up duty.

If we waste the bullpen again today and lose, the impact on future games is obvious.

[Josh Clinton. He’s a bit of an unknown player. What were his stats in the minors?]

[His recent stats weren’t bad. But recently, the Yankees, thanks to Choi Soo-won’s amazing performance, have been aiming for the championship and have made tremendous reinforcements, haven’t they?]

[Yes, I agree. Everyone watching this game knows that. The luxury tax alone is $86 million, which is about 120 billion won [South Korean currency].]

[That’s right. In fact, the Yankees didn’t just pay that huge amount of money in this trade. That’s just the salary they have to pay the players to use them. They also gave up almost their entire farm system to get those players.]

[Ah, you mean?]

[Yes, the Yankees’ farm system is almost devastated, so Josh Clinton isn’t a player who is highly rated for his ceiling, his potential.]

He was stiff.

Anyone could see he was completely consumed by nerves.

“This is driving me crazy.”

You could excuse it by saying, ‘He’s a rookie, so he might be like that,’ but not all rookies look like that. He was so frozen that he didn’t even know his hands and feet were moving together.

Josh wound up on the mound.

***

I didn’t remember well.

My name was called, and I threw a few practice pitches.

Then I went up to the mound.

When I came to my senses, Mookie Betts, one of the major league’s superstars, was standing far away with a bat, and Shohei Ohtani, the icon of this era of baseball, was watching him from second base.

To relieve the tension, I tried to find my family in the stands, who had flown all the way to New York to support me today, but I couldn’t see them at all. I knew where they were sitting, but I couldn’t see anything.

So, Josh Clinton decided to stop thinking.

And just did what he had always done.

A very simple task of throwing the ball toward the catcher’s mitt.

The ball flew.

And flew back in the opposite direction.

Tension makes the body stiff but also speeds up the reaction.

Without realizing it, Josh Clinton stretched out his left hand.

And threw the ball toward first base, just as he had trained for so long.

-Thwack!!!!

“Out!!!!”

[A ground ball right back to the pitcher!! Josh Clinton catches the ball with an amazing reaction!!]

[In the meantime, Shohei Ohtani is on third!! Two outs, runner on third. The Yankees finally add an out after seven batters.]

[It’s long. Too long. The top of the 4th is a nightmare for the Yankees. The inning is still not over.]

Aaron Judge, who was standing at first base, gave Josh a thumbs up.

“Good job, kid. Just keep doing that.”

The encouragement from the legendary Yankee giant instilled a small warmth in Josh Clinton’s heart. Of course, the opponent was still tough.

The cleanup hitter was Diego Vegas.

He was a very good hitter who was expected to get a contract of over $80 million for 5 years, even though he was a designated hitter.

Jose Trevino held out his mitt.

Josh Clinton threw the ball.

And Diego Vegas hit the ball.

A high fly ball.

And Mike Trout was where the ball was falling.

“Out!!!”

The long, long top of the 4th inning for the Dodgers was over.

All it took was two pitches from Josh Clinton.

The score was 12-6.

A number that was not easy to overcome.

***

“Good job.”

“Uh… uh,”

Josh accepted my compliment with a dazed expression.

Um… He seemed more confident and closer to me during spring training, but he looked awkward, maybe because I hadn’t seen him for about five months.

“Okay, okay, we still have six more innings to go. Even if we score just one point per inning, we’ll tie. If three guys get on base in front of me, that’s four points. Let’s come back. Huh?”

“Then I’ll add a point to that.”

“Me too.”

Tyler Wade, Aaron Judge, and Mike Trout each added a word to my statement.

“What’s wrong? Soo-won is unusually fired up today?”

“Soo-won must want to win too. We can’t just let the LA guys sweep us like this. Right?”

“Yeah, it’s not good to get swept by the team that broke my record like that. Ah, should I have hit one yesterday?”

“No, like Soo-won said, it was a walk even though they broke your perfect game. There’s not enough justification to throw a beanball [a pitch deliberately thrown at the batter’s head]. Let’s focus on winning today’s game.”

Our offense started with number nine hitter, Jose Trevino.

Jose and Anthony whispered something to each other and picked up their bats.

Honestly, I wasn’t too worried about the lineup.

After all, it was a lineup that had scored six points in three innings. What I was worried about was the pitching. How much longer could Josh hold them off? How much longer could the luck continue?

I didn’t know.

All I could do, or rather, all I had to do, was pick up my bat and do my best.

-Clang!!!!

Jose Trevino didn’t betray expectations.

A clean groundout to the infield.

Like a man with a disease that prevents his batting average from exceeding .200, he produced routine outs like a ghost because he was around .190.

Of course, not all of us lived up to expectations like Jose Trevino.

I didn’t hit the home run everyone expected either.

But still, in the bottom of the 4th inning.

We managed to narrow the score from 12-6 to 12-10.

I could see a strong conflict on Jeff Clark’s face.

Two-point difference.

Should he bring in the setup men again now?

But his choice was to put Josh Clinton back on the mound.

He looked a little smoother than the previous inning, but still full of tension.

The kid looked around the stands like an idiot.

Maybe his girlfriend or family came to watch the game. But it’s not easy to find acquaintances in a crowded audience like this. Especially when you don’t have the peace of mind like now.

The game continued.

-Clang!!!

Josh Clinton was definitely a guy with good stuff.

And against that decent stuff, the Dodgers’ lineup proved that they were on fire today.

They hit, and hit, and hit again.

And hit again.

Josh Clinton had only thrown nine pitches, but four batters had already gone to the plate.

The probability of an in-play ball becoming a hit is 30 percent on average.

So, if there are three in-play balls, one will be a hit. So, it wasn’t a special stroke of luck, but just something that fit the odds.

Out, hit, hit, and double play.

Josh Clinton shut out the 5th inning.

And he shut out the 6th inning.

He even shut out the 7th inning.

As the scoreless innings continued, Josh’s shoulders became more and more relaxed. His pitching became bolder, but as much as the Dodgers hitters hit Josh’s pitches well, the number of balls that connected to hits was strangely small.

Divine power?

Yeah, at this point, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it was the BABIP god’s [Batting Average on Balls In Play, a statistic measuring a batter’s luck] favoritism.

Our manager Jeff Clark’s agony deepened accordingly.

We might be able to come back?

But can we just keep using Josh like this? It’s scoreless, but something feels weird?

The voice of his heart is too obvious on his face.

Anyway, in the bottom of the 7th inning

The score is 12-10.

It was my turn.