Our national team, which will compete in the World Baseball Classic next month, has pitchers Kim Won-joong and Lee Yong-chan, famous for their forkball. Expectations for the two pitchers are growing because of the nature of international competitions against batters who have not often seen a forkball.

This is Reporter Bae Jeong-hoon.

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Lee Kang-chul, coach of the national team, emphasized the importance of forkball several times, which is relatively unfamiliar to hitters from non-Asian countries.

[Lee Kang-cheol/WBC national team coach: (First game) Matching the swing trajectory of Australian batters or something like that, knowing that we are very weak against big swings or forkball types, we picked a lot of those types of pitchers… .]

Similar to the fastball, the frequency of use of the forkball, which comes and falls, varies significantly depending on the region.

In last year’s KBO League, forkball accounted for 6.2% of all pitches and exceeded 10% in Japanese professional baseball, but only 1.5% in the major leagues.

This is the reason why Kim Won-joong and Lee Yong-chan, who use the best forkball in Korea, are sure to be put into the match in the first match against Australia, which will be a watershed for passing the first round.

NC Lee Yong-chan hit his second heyday by significantly increasing the proportion of forkballs last year, and Lotte Kim Won-jung, who was sluggish at the beginning of last season, also succeeded in rebounding after August with a change in the ball mix that threw far more forkballs than fastballs.

[Kim Won-joong/WBC national team pitcher: (Pokeball) They say it’s a bit unfamiliar to non-Asian countries. I think I need to make it more accurate and sharper and throw it well (at the WBC).]

The Japanese national team also selected a large number of famous pitchers for forkball, such as starter Sasaki, Yamamoto, and finisher Kuribayashi, and a ‘feast of luxury forkball’ will be held at the Tokyo Dome next month. It is a prospect to unfold.