Hyun Jin Ryu (LA Dodgers)
Hyun-jin Ryu, pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers earned his 13th win of the season after today’s match with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The game took place at the Angels Stadium in Anaheim, California and Ryu left the mound after pitching 7 innings and only allowing 2 hits.
The Dodgers defeated the Angels 7 to 0 and Ryu himself only allowed the Angles batters to reach base three times during the 7 frames he pitched (2 base hits and 1 walk). It is astounding because the Angles currently have the second most scored runs in the American League. The Dodgers took this week’s series with the Angels 3 to 1 and retained the lead in the National League Western Division. Ryu even struck out star batters such as Josh Hamilton, and Mike Trout.
Many Korean baseball fans are currently extremely interested in whether Ryu will be able to break Chan-Ho Park’s record of 18 wins, which is the highest number of wins a Korean pitcher has accumulated in a single season. At this pace, many of Ryu’s critics expressed that it is highly possible.
In the year 2000, when Chan-Ho Park was pitching for the Dodgers, Park at the time had started for 34 games and ended the season with 18 wins (10 losses) with an ERA of 3.27. His record was broken by Taiwanese pitcher Chien-ming Wang (Toronto Blue Jays) who accumulated 19 wins in 2006. Park had 13 wins in the same season.
Today, Ryu had just ended his 22nd appearance on the mound where he scraped his 13th win. He achieved this victory 17 days faster than Park did in 2000. Because of his fast pace, some analysts went as far as to estimate that Ryu might even break Wang’s record and become the Asian pitcher with the most wins in a season. They believe that if the dodgers batters would continue to help the starter by scoring more runs and the bull pen by not allowing further runs to be scored by their opponents.
