2013. I was in 1st grade at Rashkis Elementary when Ryu Hyun-jin made his debut at Dodger Stadium. My dad, putting his accounting homework aside, brought me to the living room. In awe, he said: “Look at this. It’s like he’s painting the strikezone.”
Baseball fans have always been obsessed with velocity. Once it reached the 95 mph mark. Then it was 100 mph. Now it’s 105 mph. It’ll continue to go on like that. Ryu threw 93 mph before his injury, which is excellent by Korean standards but average numbers in the MLB. What shined was his command of the ball. He is my first case study of what scouts usually refer to “Pitchability.”
Ryu’s strong suit is command and sequencing. Command isn’t just about control (throwing strikes), rather throwing quality pitches on the borderline of the strikezone. I still vividly remember when he pitched against the Braves in the Postseason. What he did was simply outsmart them with pitch sequencing and immaculate command. He located his changeup perfectly off his fastball, which meant that the two pitches looked exactly the same until the changeup dropped to hit the dirt while the batter swung and missed.
Ryu’s fascinating command of the ball is something I kept on reminding myself of when teaching students through the Truth Review. It’s not gonna work if you only pitch “fastball facts” (raw data) at a reader. You need to add a little spice by mixing it up with something else. To do this, you have to use a setup pitch, or a pitch used to fix a batter’s eyesight on the ball at a certain height. This way, when a breaking ball is pitched at them, they feel as if the degree of fall is greater than it actually is. Ryu was a maestro at doing this, especially in sequencing with pitches of different speed. He purposefully exploits the batters’ aggressiveness against them in getting outs.
Ryu had his weaknesses as well, which made me devastated to see him decline from the peak performance I saw in the first few years of his career in the MLB. The harsh schedule and travels across the US, alongside issues with Ryu’s shoulder and elbow that made him recover from multiple surgeries broke my heart as a fan, but it made me aware of the clear limits of transitioning from the KBO to the MLB. Korean pitchers aren’t able to develop the type of velocity that American players are able to produce, perhaps because of the old-school training methods that are still standing strong in Korea’s youth development programs. Pitchers rely solely on finesse, meaning that the slightest margin can lead to multiple runs being given up. If Ryu pitches an inch off, it’s a home run or at least an extra-based-hit from the batter. Missing a 100 mph pitch by an inch wouldn’t even make the smallest difference.
Ryu’s performance showed me how precision can beat power, whether it is in baseball or other fields of competition. It is something I look forward to continuing practicing through the Truth Review.