April 8th, 2009 - Gwuangju, South Korea

I’m not sure that actually qualifies as a start but I did get to pitch my first game against Kia. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. Sometimes in this game you have some bad luck, sometimes you make mistakes, I had a little bit of both.

The very first hitter of the game blooped a single in the outfield. There is nothing I can do about that, I made a good pitch, the batter didn’t hit it well at all but he reached base safely. That is baseball. The next batter hit a low liner to LF that got lost in the lights. Nothing I could have done about that either, I made a pitch and got the contact that 99 times out of 100 results in an out, I ran into the 1 time it doesn’t work out that way. The ball went over the outfielder’s head and the runner from first came around to score. That is a difficult play for the outfielder when the ball goes right into the lights. Nevertheless, two hitters that could have been two outs but instead 0 outs with one run in.

The next batter hit an easy groundball to third for me. Had the previous ball not gotten lost in the lights that groundball is an inning ending double play and I put up a 0 in the first inning, but those weren’t the breaks for me in this game.

The next batter I really fudged up. I have faced this hitter before both in Korea and in the States and have a game plan that is effective against him. For whatever dumb reason I did not follow my plan, quite the opposite actually and I paid the price for it. It is no one’s fault but my own, I needed to be more assertive with what I wanted to throw. The batter hit a HR and I was frustrated knowing this should have never ever happened, at least not this way. That was a mental lapse on my part and an embarrassing one at that.

I struck out the next hitter and the next hit a routine groundball to shortstop but he was able to beat it out. Nothing I can do about that either, I made a good pitch, got the result I expected, he hit in the right place and just slow enough to beat the throw at first base. Such is baseball. The next batter flew out.

So I faced 7 hitters and 6 of them I pitched well enough to get outs, 1 of them I really messed up. I’ll take 6 out of 7 any day especially knowing that HR to that type of hitter is something that won’t happen too often. It was just one of those innings. Despite the three runs I wasn’t fazed by what that happened. I was confident with the way I was throwing but I was taken out of the game.

I made the decision a few years ago to draw on the positives of my performances and get away from beating myself up over every single mistake or every bad game. I could have walked away from this game frustrated and angry but I refuse to do that anymore. Of course I would have liked to pitch longer but things are different here and that is out of my control. I do what I can and get ready for the next one. No worries.


source: cjbaseball.com
credits: aeinsshi