“We’ve made a model that can go to the next level.” (Media day on the 6th) “Kelly brought a gift.” (Commercial exhibition briefing on the 1st)
LG manager Yoon Kyung-yeop dropped a ‘spoiler’ at the ‘live’ media day on the 6th, a day before the Korean Series, which was watched by many fans. He revealed that Casey Kelly, who was announced as the starting pitcher for Game 1, had been honing a new pitch in preparation for the Korean Series. The new pitch Kelly has been honing is the forkball. Until now, he had kept it “off the record” to avoid exposing his power.
Kelly started Game 1 of the Korean Series against the KT Wiz in the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO Postseason at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, on July 7 and pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing two runs on four hits with two walks and six strikeouts. Although he was unable to win the game as his team fell to 2-3, he was unfazed by the three errors he committed while on the mound. Only one of the errors resulted in a run in the first inning.
On this day, the LG Power Analytics team added one more pitch to Kelly’s stash. In total, Kelly threw 92 pitches. He used six different pitches. He threw 27 four-seam fastballs, 27 cut fastballs, 21 curves, 12 two-seam fastballs, three forks, and two changeups. The pitch of note here is the forkball. It’s a new pitch that Kelly has never thrown before.
On the first day of the Korean Series, manager Yoon Kyung-yup said, “Kelly gave me a gift. I started throwing a forkball,” and said, “I struck out all of the batters in the practice game with Sangmu.” However, the breakdown of pitches in the Oct. 31 scrimmage didn’t identify any forkballs. Given that Kelly had requested an “off-the-record” statement from the team’s public relations team that he was throwing forkballs to reporters, it’s possible that the power analytics team didn’t want to disclose them either.
Not a single ball was identified as a forkball on the portal or on the KBO app’s text broadcast page for Game 1 on July 7. Since it hadn’t been thrown before, and it wasn’t actively thrown in the game, it could have been something other than a forkball. 무지개토토 주소
It must have been a challenge. It’s hard enough to prepare a new ball, much less throw it for the first time on the big stage of the Korean Series when you haven’t had much opportunity to test it in practice, but Kelly was bold enough to do it. And she did it with a quality start.
It’s hard to know exactly how much of an impact the presence of the forkball had, but it’s clear that KT’s batters didn’t have an easy time with Kelly’s pitches. Of the nine batters who started, only Kim Sang-soo (one hit), Jang Jang-woo (two hits), and Choi Jae-dae (one hit) had a hit against Kelly.
Kelly kept his pace despite three errors while on the mound. In the first inning, a throwing error by Park Dong-won allowed the bases to be loaded with no outs, preventing an early collapse. In the second inning, an error and a hit by Moon Bo-kyung put runners on first and second, but she induced a triple play.