Blue Jays' Ryu Hyun-jin inspired by thriving teammate to shake things up

유지호 / 2021-09-07 07:27:41

pitcher-performance

▲ In this USA Today Sports photo via Reuters, Ryu Hyun-jin of the Toronto Blue Jays pitches against the New York Yankees in the bottom of the first inning of a Major League Baseball regular season game at Yankee Stadium in New York on Sept. 6, 2021. (Yonhap)

▲ In this Getty Images photo, Ryu Hyun-jin of the Toronto Blue Jays pitches against the New York Yankees in the bottom of the fourth inning of a Major League Baseball regular season game at Yankee Stadium in New York on Sept. 6, 2021. (Yonhap)

pitcher-performance

Blue Jays' Ryu Hyun-jin inspired by thriving teammate to shake things up

By Yoo Jee-ho

SEOUL, Sept. 7 (Yonhap) -- Whether it was a cutter or a hard slider, it doesn't matter. The important thing is Ryu Hyun-jin, the slumping South Korean starter for the Toronto Blue Jays, threw that pitch to great effect against the division rivals New York Yankees.

Ryu tossed six scoreless innings in an 8-0 victory over the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in New York on Monday (local time), improving to 13-8 for the year.

The crafty lefty flashed some hard stuff, relatively speaking anyway, against New York. Of his 80 pitches, Ryu threw 30 four-seam fastballs and 22 pitches that were identified by the statistics site Baseball Servant as cutters, but Ryu himself called sliders.

Either way, Ryu said afterward he took his cues from his teammate Robbie Ray, a fellow left-hander and an American League (AL) Cy Young Award candidate who has been almost an exclusively fastball-slider pitcher.

Ray leads the AL with a 2.60 ERA and ranks second with 212 strikeouts. In his most recent start on Sunday, Ray threw 6 2/3 scoreless innings of one-hit ball against the Oakland Athletics, while throwing four-seamers and sliders 96 percent of the time (103 out of 107 pitches).

"Before today's game, I studied the way Ray pitches," Ryu said in his postgame Zoom session. "He has been successful relying mostly on his fastball and slider. I knew I could lean on a similar repertoire, and I decided I should give it a try. I started moving in that direction in my last start, and things worked out really well today."

Ray has been attacking right-handed batters with sliders all season long, and Ryu wanted to emulate his teammate.

"I am able to throw my slider either high or low in the zone, and I thought I could keep hitters off balance better with low sliders," Ryu said. "I told my catcher, Danny Jansen, before the game that I wanted to mix in different pitches. He called a great game, and I was pretty comfortable on the mound."

The new approach may have come at a slight cost, as Ryu said he felt his body tighten up a bit after only 80 pitches through six innings.

"I didn't want to push myself too much and told the coaching staff (about his physical condition)," Ryu said. "But it's nothing serious. I will have no problem making my next start."

The victory extended Toronto's winning streak to five games and kept the team firmly in the postseason hunt. The Blue Jays found themselves 3.5 games behind the Boston Red Sox for the second Wild Card spot, prior to the Red Sox's game against the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Jays have 26 games left this season.

"This is the strongest I've felt all season," Ryu said. "I don't have a lot of starts left (in the regular season), and I'll try to concentrate on each and every batter the rest of the way."

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