“We needed a steady starter.”
In quick succession, the team changed three players in two days. Kia laid the foundation for its rebuild.
On June 6, KIA announced the signings of Mario Sanchez and Thomas Pannoni, both 29, about four hours apart. The aggressive moves followed the previous day’s acquisition of catcher Kim Tae-gun via trade.
KIA, a left-handed pitching organization, added two right-handed pitchers with fastballs ahead of the season. Adonis Medina was an early candidate to be released after struggling with a 2-6 record and a 6.05 ERA, while Shawn Anderson, who had pitched relatively well with a 4-7 record and a 3.76 ERA, appeared to be teetering on the edge. In fact, Anderson pitched a normal schedule, throwing out of the bullpen before the SSG game on May 5.
However, Kia announced the Sanchez signing earlier in the day and later revealed that it had signed Pannoni in the afternoon. Sanchez is a former starting rotation pitcher for the Taiwanese Professional Baseball Tung Yi. In 10 games, he threw 62.6 innings and posted an 8-1 record with a 1.44 ERA. He has a slender build at 185 centimeters and 75 kilograms, but he is considered to have excellent pitches and game management skills. In Taiwan, he led the team in wins and ERA in the first half of the season. He is known to throw a fastball in the mid-140 kilometers per hour and a curveball, slider, and changeup.
Panoni, who boarded a flight to South Korea later in the day, is a “returning player” who played for the KIA last year. In his rookie season in the KBO, he pitched 82.2 innings in 14 games, going 3-4 with a 2.72 ERA. He has a variety of pitches on both ends of the ball and good command. After failing to re-sign with the Kia, he joined Nashville, Milwaukee’s Triple-A affiliate, and has been a fixture in the starting rotation. In 11 appearances in the minors this year, he went 3-1 with a 2.70 ERA.카지노
“We need a more solid starting lineup,” said KIA head coach Kim Jong-kook, who revealed the reason for replacing all of his foreign pitchers ahead of the team’s away game against SSG at SSG Landers Field in Incheon on June 6. “The decision to replace Madina was already made, and Anderson is not bad, but there was a lack of stability,” he said. “It is the role of a starting pitcher to throw more than six innings, and we were lacking in this area.”
The team is in ninth place, but only four games behind third-place Doosan. KIA hasn’t even played half of its regular season schedule. That means there’s plenty of room to rebound. Baseball is a pitcher’s game, and the flower of a pitcher’s game is the start. They are the ones who start the game and create the flow. The addition of a foreign pitcher and a veteran catcher suggests that the team is aiming for more than just a top-five finish.
After playing seven games, including today’s, they’ll head into the week-long All-Star break. That means plenty of time for the new foreign pitchers and catchers to gel and form a lafor. Quietly but urgently, KIA is sharpening its claws.