SEOUL-- It is one thing to lose three games in a row in baseball and quite another to look as utterly helpless as the NC Dinos did to start the 2022 season in South Korean baseball season.
The Dinos have scored a grand total of two runs to lose their first three games of the new Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season. They batted .077 (7-for-91) in those three games. According to Sports 2i, the official statistics provider for the KBO, the Dinos are the first team in league history to hit below .100 in the first three games of a season. For a team that signed two of the KBO's best contact hitters in free agency last winter, this is far from an ideal start.
The Dinos' season had an inauspicious opening. In their first game on Saturday, they were no-hit by the SSG Landers: starter Wilmer Font threw nine perfect innings and then reliever Kim Taek-hyoung pitched around a walk to complete the combined no-hitter in a 4-0 victory by the Landers in 10 innings.
The following day, the Dinos were held scoreless through seven innings and ended up losing to the Landers 4-1. They went scoreless in the first 17 innings of the season, the third-longest drought ever to begin a season.
On Tuesday, the Dinos scored just one run again in falling to the Lotte Giants 5-1. Lotte starter Kim Jin-uk struck out 10 batters, and no team has struck out more than the Dinos' 33 so far.
The Dinos shelled out 16.4 billion won (US$13.5 million) combined to sign free agent outfielders Park Kun-woo and Son Ah-seop, who entered this season ranked second and third among active players in career batting average, with Son leading all current players with 2,080 hits.
The sample size is admittedly small, but Park is 1-for-11 and Son is 0-for-10 to start their first season with the new team. Nick Martini, the Dinos' new foreign hitter, is 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts.
The Dinos are missing veteran catcher and perennial MVP contender Yang Eui-ji, sidelined with an illness. But his absence alone doesn't explain the team-wide offensive struggles.
Other clubs in the league are also having trouble getting their bats going, as strikeouts have gone up and walks have dropped in the early going compared to last season.
The 10 teams have pitched to a 3.11 ERA, down from 4.44 from the same point last season. The Landers have a 1.93 ERA, and nine out of 10 clubs have a sub-4.00 ERA.
Pitchers are striking out 8.22 batters per game, up from 7.25 per game last season. The number of walks has fallen from 4.19 last year to 2.97 this year.
On the flip side, the league's average slugging percentage has fallen from .383 last year to .314 this year, while the on-base percentage has dropped from .346 to .300.
Yang is one of a few veteran hitters currently recovering from illnesses, and once they return, offensive numbers should bounce back up -- though perhaps not to a degree from previous seasons.
The KBO has said it will begin calling pitches in the upper part of the zone for strikes. It is tempting to say the league has expanded the zone, but the KBO will be quick to tell you the zone hasn't changed and umpires are only making calls based on the rule book definition of the zone.
"I think the way umpires are calling pitches this year will have a huge impact on the league," said Park Jae-hong, a color commentator for the cable station MBC Sports Plus. "Teams with good starters on the back of their rotations should thrive this year."
Source: Yonhap News Agency