Chapter 848 – 834. 2027 World Series. (3)
[Gerrit Call ends the inning without giving up a run while finishing off Palenski! … Strike out Vientos! … Two outs with Ohapee grounded out. … Verdugo’s hit! Sliding in center field! Catch it! Joo Seung-cheol steals Verdugo’s hit! Help Otani! This is how the inning ends!]
[Pitchers from both teams gave up scores in the first inning, but they did well in the second inning. As expected, it is a match between the best pitchers.]
[… In the top of the third inning, the leadoff hitter was Josh Sean, who hit a home run in his first at-bat today. … It lands in front of right field! Sean goes to second base! At second base! Out! Soto’s fantastic throw! Snipe the batter and runner from second base!]
[Wow, Joo Seung-cheol showed great defense in the previous inning, but this time, Soto helped with the call.]
[Now it’s Ohtani at bat. … Gets a walk. And at the plate is Tatis, who won MVP in both the Division Series and Championship Series. … Second baseman! Grab it! Second base! First base! Double play! The New York Yankees count two outs at once! The call ends the top of the third inning!]
[The defensive concentration of both teams is very good today, right? It was a fairly fast ball, but Ji Maeng-ho caught it well. In fact, Ji Maeng-ho recorded 18 errors this season and ranks 20th among second basemen with more than 800 innings with a fielding percentage of 0.976. But it ranks 7th in range factor?]
[That means…]
[This means that there are a lot of mistakes, but the defense range is wide. As expected, his athletic ability is amazing.]
[Okay. In fact, if your batting skills are as good as Ji Maeng-ho’s, you can both be ranked at the bottom, right?]
[Well, defense is an important factor when evaluating a baseball player’s ability, but if you have a hitting like Ji Maeng-ho’s, you can just stand still at second base. Haha.]
[Yes. The New York Yankees heading into the bottom of the third inning with Ji Maeng-ho’s great defense. … The leadoff batter in the bottom of the third inning is Volpi. … Strike! Out! Ohtani strikes out Volpi! And Ji Maeng-ho comes to bat.]
[In general, one of the old sayings in baseball is ‘after a good defense, you hit hard,’ and I’m looking forward to Ji Maeng-ho’s at-bat.]
*
‘Whoa, is it that guy again?’
Ohtani looked at Ji Meng-ho coming to bat and secretly sighed.
Teammate Joo Seung-cheol told me that his nickname during his time in Korea was ‘devil.’ And is there a better nickname for him? Ji Maeng-ho was the devil himself for a pitcher.
He had the ability to predict what kind of ball he would throw and, unlike a Geth hitter, he was good at handling fast balls.
Moreover, that wasn’t the only thing about him that was evil. In addition to his striking ability, this guy had one more devil-like ability, and that was his quick feet.
Even if he had an on-base percentage in the low .300 range, his base running play was so great that he could have earned a spot on the major league roster with just his feet and base running sense.
I gave up a run in the first inning because I couldn’t stop him.
I can’t believe I have to deal with that devil again. His head was pounding.
‘Should we do as Joo says?’
And while my head was pounding, an easy way to deal with him came to mind. That’s the way to filter him out.
Before the World Series started, the most cautious person in the LA Dodgers was, of course, Ji Maeng-ho.
That’s right, even if he was split into two players this season, he showed enough performance in the infield to win the Silver Slugger, and since he was a hitter himself, he knew how difficult it would be to achieve such a record. No, it wasn’t difficult. The results he recorded this season were nothing short of impossible.
The first major league records set by Ji Maeng-ho were records that would shock the world even if only one was broken, and he broke several of those records.
And since Ohtani felt that way, the Dodgers’ manager and coaching staff were equally surprised.
That’s why the Dodgers made a decision to stop him.
Of course, Joo Seung-cheol’s suggestion played a big role in that decision.
Among the Dodgers coaches who heard about Joo Seung-cheol’s strategy of skipping all at-bats, there were people who played or coached with Barry Bonds during his playing days, so they knew that even an intentional bases-loaded ball would work for the team’s victory. It was people.
In this way, the Dodgers’ coaches analyzed all of Ji Maeng-ho’s Korean Series games, and were able to find a strategy to significantly suppress Ji Maeng-ho.
First, the first part of the strategy was to compete with the pitcher in a situation where there were no runners and no outs.
Ji Maeng-ho’s on-base percentage is .500. Anyway, if you win the game and get 1 point, and even if you get on base, it’s the same 1 point, so betting on the 50% chance of stopping him and the 1% chance of him failing to steal base had a high chance of winning.
The second part of the strategy was to skip him if there was a runner on base who could prevent him from stealing. Judge, Soto, and Stanton behind him were scary hitters, but the scores they gave up when they hit a home run were similar.
The final part of the operation was to filter Ji Maeng-ho from the 2nd company under any circumstances. This was a possible strategy due to Judge’s poor form this fall, but there was a possibility that it would change depending on Judge’s form.
Moreover, when analyzing his Korean Series game, we found out that there was a way to suppress Ji Maeng-ho in easy situations after Seong-Hyun intentionally gave a walk to the lower-ranking batting line, but the coaches left the method up to the players’ choice.
But there was one exception to all these operations.
The Dodgers’ ace, Ohtani.
That was the courtesy the Dodgers could give to the team’s true ace.
But now, Ohtani, who gave up one point to Ji Meng-ho so easily, just wanted to skip Ji Meng-ho.
‘I struck out Judge…, How can I block Soto with an out…’
But soon Otani shook his head. Because there was no such word as ‘escape’ in Otani’s baseball life.
Pitcher and batter. Even when he started the so-called ‘dual sword style’, everyone tried to dissuade him. However, Otani did not run away from that and completed the ‘dual sword style’ that was considered impossible. Some people disparaged Ohtani, saying that he did not receive MVP honors as an individual pitcher or hitter, but in the end, Ohtani rose to the top as both a pitcher and a hitter.
And this season, as a pitcher, he finished second in the Cy Young League in the National League, and as a hitter, he was awarded the National League MVP award. As a hitter, there was only one Ji Maeng-ho, and as a pitcher, there were only three pitchers – NL’s Alcantara, AL’s Trilling and McClanahan – who could put their names in front of Ohtani.
Like Ji Maeng-ho’s impossible record, Ohtani is also a player who has overcome ‘impossibility’ to reach this position.
That’s why Otani didn’t run away like he always did.
‘Because I got a hit with the sweeper earlier…’
The important thing to avoid the ghost-like eyes is to throw it as close to the zone as possible.
However, it was clear that if he crossed the zone even a little, it would go over the fence, so Otani threw the ball as carefully as possible.
“Ball.”
“Strike!”
“Ball.”
Perfect!
“Foul!”
Perfect!
“Foul!”
“Ball.”
[Hey, Otani and Ji Maeng-ho. As befits the current major league players, the tight competition continues. It’s a truly eye-pleasing match.]
The match between Ohtani and Ji Meng-ho, who did not run away, soon reached a full count, and Ohtani chose the splitter that had been with him since he was young as the deciding ball.
The throwing position is low towards the body.
However, is it because he applied too much force because he was conscious of the game against Ji Maeng-ho? The moment he threw it, Otani realized something was wrong. The splitter, which was supposed to come out only after passing 100 balls, flew toward the high side.
‘This… !’
The moment the ball was thrown, the image of the batted ball going over the fence appeared in Otani’s mind.
However, Otani did not know.
That missed throw was the best luck of this game.
Whoa!
Ji Maeng-ho’s bat swings with the sound of wind splitting the ball. But the only thing that bat cut was the wind.
“Swing~! Strike out!”
And the referee’s light call raises the ground.
[Ohtani strikes out Ji Maeng-ho! What is this ball? I got 93.2 miles (149 km/h), is it a change-up?]
If the speed had been in the low to mid 140 km/h range like other splitters, he would have recognized that it was a stray throw and gone over the fence right away, but no matter how strong he was, he couldn’t have responded like that to Ohtani’s fast ball.
“Aaaaah!”
And Otani roars at that sight. Ohtani is a player who shows little emotion on the mound, and the situation was also early in the game, in the bottom of the third inning, and it was not a particularly dangerous situation. Fans watching the game watched Ohtani with a puzzled mind because of his emotional expression that seemed a little excessive.
However, the Dodgers’ players felt warm because they seemed to know how Ohtani felt when he competed with Ji Maeng-ho.
[… Ohtani ends the inning by catching Judge’s sharp batted ball! After a timely hit from Soto, he continues his streak of 8 batters in a row! Score 1:1!]
“Let’s win today!”
“Good! Let’s just keep going like this!”
After the inning was over, the Dodgers’ players returned to the dugout and showed their fighting spirit.
But…,
[… Betts’ batted ball was handled directly by the first baseman, with one out. … Gerrit Cole strikes out Smith! He gets his sixth strikeout in today’s game! … Joo Seung-cheol’s batted ball! Ji Maeng-ho catches it and throws to first base. This is the end of the inning. Today, pitchers from both teams show a tight pitching battle.]
[Wow, Gerrit Cole and Ohtani. They’re all pitchers who are always aiming for the Cy Young Award, right? High-quality game from high-quality pitchers. This is truly a performance worthy of Game 1 of the World Series!]
… The Yankees also had an ace.
Cole, who was burning everything as if today was his last, did not throw a ball that went below 96 mph, and the combination of Cole’s skillful game management and his fast speed that seemed to set everything on fire, meant that the Dodgers’ hitters were unable to score any more points. .
‘Today’s game is a one-point game.’
With the fighting spirit shown by the starting pitchers of both teams, the Yankees and Dodgers players instinctively realized that today’s game would be decided by just one run.
[… Gerrit Call ends the top of the 6th inning with an out! The score is still 1:1! The game now goes to the bottom of the 6th inning! … Ohtani catches Volpi with a grounder to second base and counts out. Ji Maeng-ho is now at bat. In today’s game, I am recording 1 hit and 1 strikeout in 2 at-bats.]
And in the bottom of the sixth inning, Ji Maeng-ho, the player most specialized in scoring runs, came to bat again.
‘Whoa…, Like before… He’s not a real devil either. However, he is not a god as Yankees fans call him Jisus. You can do it. I can do it.’
Otani greeted Ji Maeng-ho with mind control, and the guy raised his bat and aimed it at the fence.
[Oh! Ji Maeng-ho’s predicted home run comes out here!]
-Waaaaa!!!!!
Yankee Stadium is shaken by Ji Maeng-ho’s predicted home run, which boasts a hit rate of almost 100%. But Otani was cool. This was just a shallow move to shake oneself up, like laying down the bat in the first at-bat.
‘Okay, if you want to hit it once, hit it.’
Of course, this time he did not show the grip like he did in the All-Star Game, but Ohtani, who gained confidence by striking out Ji Maeng-ho in his second at-bat, threw the ball confidently.
However,
Ta – Aak!
This time he couldn’t expect the same luck as before.
[The 82nd ball… I rolled it up! All outfielders stop! A batted ball that doesn’t even need to be checked! Ji Maeng-ho turns this game around on his own! Score 2:1! The Yankees succeed in a comeback! Ji Maeng-ho raises his fist towards the home fans! Yankee Stadium is already crazy!]
-Waaaaa!!!!
‘… Was I too arrogant?’
And Ohtani reflected on his arrogance in Yankee Stadium, where shouts that seemed as if they would overturn New York were overturned.
‘… I guess I’ll have to filter it out next time we meet.’
With the determination to follow the team’s winning plan from now on.
