How hard has it been to deal with foreign pitchers so far, so they must have worked hard to renew their commitment to bring the best pitchers? All the pitchers they recruited through complaints from fans that they were too slow are active big leaguers who pitched in the Major League last year as well. Those who are that talented are highly anticipated.
KIA Tigers was considered the best three teams in the 2024 season along with LG Twins and KT Wiz even before recruiting foreign pitchers. If only new foreign pitchers are good at throwing, the team will be able to compete for the top spot, rather than a quarterfinal match.
KIA had difficulties in farming foreign pitchers in both 2022 and last year. Failure of foreign pitchers in the recent KBO League means failure of this season. As such, foreign pitchers occupy a large portion of teams. This is because they are in charge of the team’s one-two punch, which must be defeated by fighting the opponent team’s first and second starters. If the team loses ground, its performance will naturally deteriorate. For Kia, it had a hard time. Starting as Sean Nolin and Ronnie Williams in 2022, both suffered injury and slump, and even brought in Thomas Panoni instead of Ronnie, but in the end, the three players ended up with a total of 14 wins (eight wins, three wins, three wins, and three wins). KIA advanced to the wild card game as fifth place, but lost to KT Wiz. Last year, Kia recruited Sean Anderson and Adonis Medina, who were good in ball power, but had difficulties as it revealed problems with its ball control against Korean hitters. Consequently, both were replaced. Four foreign pitchers came and won 16 games. With injuries of its main players overlapping, Kia ended the season with a winning rate of over 50 percent with 73 wins, two draws and 69 losses, finishing sixth place, trailing the Doosan Bears by one game.
Kia has solid bullpen pitchers such as Lim Ki-young, Lee Ui-ri, and Choi Ji-min and Jang Hyun-sik as well as good pitchers such as closer Jung Hae-young, while having second-best batting lineup including Na Sung-bum, Choi Hyung-woo, Socrates, Kim Seon-bin, Kim Do-yeong, Ko Jong-wook and Choi Won-jun. Foreign starters and injuries were the reasons for last year’s poor performance.
As a result, KIA focused its efforts on foreign pitchers and carefully approached medical checkups when finding a good pitcher. Some pitchers couldn’t sign a contract because they had a problem with medical checkups even though they almost reached a contract.
It was not until the new year that he signed his first contract. The first pitcher to sign was Will Crowe (30). He made his big league debut with the Washington Nationals in the 2020 season and moved to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2021 season.
In terms of Major League career, he is superior to foreign pitchers coming to Korea. In the 2021 season, he pitched in 26 games (25 starts), recording four wins and eight losses with an ERA of 5.48. In the 2022 season, he pitched in 59 games due to the bullpen, recording four wins and 10 losses with four saves and 16 holds with an ERA of 4.38.
He had a bad shoulder in the 2023 season. He pitched in only five big league games and later finished the season in the minor leagues. Because of his shoulder, KIA meticulously conducted a medical test for Crow. In Japan, Kia, which showed interest in Crow, also succeeded in signing a contract.
Two weeks have passed since then, and he signed a second pitcher 10 days before the start of the spring camp. He is the 30th and last player in the KBO League. Kia said on Wednesday that it signed a contract with James Nail for 250,000 dollars on the 18th. As he was on the 40-man roster of Major League players, Kia paid the transfer fee to recruit him. It costs a total of 950,000 dollars to recruit Nail, including a down payment of 200,000 dollars, an annual salary of 350,000 dollars, and incentives of 150,000 dollars. The KBO League rules allow foreign players to be paid up to 1 million dollars including transfer fees when recruiting new players.
Nail, who was selected in the 20th round by the Oakland Athletics in the 2015 rookie draft, took the mound in the Major League only after playing in the minor leagues for seven years and moving to the St. Louis Cardinals as a free agent. He pitched in a total of seven games in the 2022 season with no wins or losses. All seven games were in the bullpen. He pitched in 10 big league games with an 8.80 ERA, and in 31 games (three starts) in Triple-A, he pitched in five wins, three losses, and three saves with an ERA of 3.66. He pitched as a bullpen agent for the last three years, but he pitched as a starter until 2019.
It is the seventh year since the team won the title in 2017. Kia, which acquired Choi Hyung-woo as an FA at the time by investing 10 billion won (approx. 10 billion won) for the first time in its history, recruited two big leaguers this time and expressed its intention to compete for the title rather than the semifinal.
Last year, Eric Peddy of the NC Dinos showed his ace power by winning 20 games to elevate his team, which was expected to be the last place candidate, to fourth place. If Crow or Nail shows pedi-level pitching, there is no reason for KIA to lose to LG or KT. The key will be how quickly Crow and Nail adapt to the KBO league and take good care of their bodies in a long season. 토토사이트먹튀