Samsung Kim Jae-yoon, overwhelming performance in visiting game... Significant difference between home and visit

Away hits allowed rate: 0.115, OPS allowed rate: 0.315

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Dae-ho Lee = Professional baseball Samsung Lions firefighter Kim Jae-yoon (35) is having the best season since his debut.

He appeared in 57 games and ranked first in the league in saves with 7 wins, 5 losses, 31 saves, and an ERA of 3.05.

His home record is mediocre with 2 wins, 5 losses, 18 saves, and an ERA of 5.76, but his performance in visiting games is perfect with 5 wins, 13 saves, and an ERA of 0.00 in 24 games, which is one of Kim Jae-yoon's characteristics this season.

On the 5th, in the game against the LG Twins in Jamsil, where the score was 3-3, in the bottom of the 9th inning, he took the mound in relief from a desperate crisis with no outs on first and third base, and eliminated 2 innings without allowing any runs, leading to a 4-3 comeback victory. This was the highlight of Kim Jae-yoon's pitching this year.

It is even more surprising when we look at the detailed performance of Kim Jae-yoon's visiting game.

The hits allowed rate is 0.115, the OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) allowed rate is 0.315, and the on-base percentage allowed per inning (WHIP) is 0.68.

This figure is better than the visiting game record of Oh Seung-hwan, the best firefighter in KBO League history, during his prime.

Usually, Oh Seung-hwan's prime years are 2011, when he recorded 47 saves and an ERA of 0.63, and 2012, when he recorded 37 saves and an ERA of 1.94.

According to the KBO secretariat, in 2011, Seung-Hwan Oh's hits allowed rate in visiting games was 0.134, OPS allowed was 0.328, and WHIP was 0.66.

In 2012, the hitting percentage was 0.129, OPS 0.351, and WHIP 0.65.

This year, Kim Jae-yoon is slightly ahead of Oh Seung-hwan's prime in terms of hits allowed and OPS, and his WHIP is slightly behind.

Kim Jae-yoon himself has said several times, “I pitch with the same mindset in both home and visit games, but I don’t know why the results are different.”

This extreme home/visit discrepancy is the result of a combination of various factors, and one of the likely causes is 'flying balls'.

Jae-yoon Kim is a ‘fly ball pitcher’ who has more than twice as many fly ball outs than ground balls.

This season, there were 31 ground ball outs and 72 fly balls, and the ground ball/fly ball ratio was 0.43, the lowest figure on the team.

Jaeyoon Kim had 11 ground balls and 33 fly balls in the visiting game, with a lower ground ball/fly ball figure of 0.33.

On the other hand, the home game had 20 ground balls and 39 fly balls, which was 0.51.

This season, the number of home extra-base hits allowed was 8 (6 doubles, 2 home runs), and it can be interpreted that the small stadium of Daegu Samsung Lions Park had a disadvantage in suppressing long hits by fly ball pitchers.

Also, as more effort is put into ball control to avoid allowing extra-base hits, walks are bound to increase.