Her career with 22 wins in the Major League is overshadowed. Jaime Barria, a 28-year-old foreign pitcher brought by the Hanwha Eagles in the professional baseball league, is throwing cold water with his disappointing pitching. No one would have expected that even five innings would be too much.
Barria started against Kiwoom in Daejeon on the 11th, but collapsed with nine hits (two home runs), four strikeouts and seven runs in four innings. Hanwha, whose Barria collapsed early, lost 3-7. The upward trend was dampened by losing consecutive games for the first time in 21 days since the 21st of last month.
He was nervous from the start of the first inning. He managed to secure two outs well, had five consecutive hits and allowed three runs. He had enough throws including fastballs, sliders and changeups. He allowed two hits in the second inning as well, and had a three-run home run against Song with runners on the first and third bases with one out. His fastball with a pitch of 147 kilometers per hour went way over the right fence.
He also allowed a solo home run to leadoff hitter Won Sung-joon in the third inning. The 134-km-per-hour slider was in the middle of the second pitch, and Won Sung-joon pulled it without missing it. The solo shot that crossed the right fence with a line drive became a two-homer game for the second consecutive game following the game against Samsung in Daegu on the 6th. The number of long balls allowed is increasing rapidly, with four consecutive home runs being hit.
In the fourth inning, he was blocked by three outs, but gave up seven runs through the third inning, sending the game to Kiwoom in a hurry. Hanwha started the bullpen session from the fifth inning, and Barria ended up in four innings for the second consecutive game. He has been replaced in four innings in four of the last five games.
Barria had four wins and four losses with an ERA of 5.31 in 12 games (57 ⅔ innings), 53 strikeouts and gave only 12 walks, but his batting average is high at around .311 (.311), which is the seventh highest among 66 pitchers who played in more than 50 innings in the league.
At the match against Kiwoom on Sunday, Barria’s fastball speed was measured as 152 km per hour and 148 km per hour on average. He throws fast balls, but cannot overwhelm batters. This is apparently due to his monotonous pitching pattern. Except for fastballs and sliders in the main weapon, there are no balls to attract batters. Change-ups and curves are flat. It is not that good for right-handed hitters (.275), but left-handed hitters (.338) have a much higher hit rate. Seven of the nine hits were hit by left-handed hitters in the match against Kiwoom on the same day.
Korean hitters these days produce a positive hit no matter how fast the ball is. There are no powerful breaking balls other than sliders, and the pattern is monotonous as the batter mainly throws outward. It is good for batters to bring in pitches or course play. Even if they score an advantageous count, the number of pitches increases due to weak number of pitches and poor pitching ability in innings. Six of the 12 games failed to pass five innings. What foreign pitchers need the most is the ability to digest innings, which would be a problem if this continues.
Hanwha released Felix Peña in late May and acquired Barria for a total of 550,000 U.S. dollars. He has drawn attention as an experienced pitcher with 22 wins in the Major League. He won 10 games as a starting pitcher in his first year with the Los Angeles Angels in 2018, and displayed competitive edge with the two-point ERA (2.61) as a bullpen in 2022. His performance has declined since last year, and he stayed in Triple-A this year, but considering his career and young age of 28, he was more likely to succeed than fail. He was evaluated as the best pitcher that he can bring during the season. 먹튀검증
Barria, who joined the starting lineup with Kim Kyung-moon’s appointment in early June, had two wins through two quality starts in the first three games, displaying good performance with an ERA of 1.69 points. Although he presented Kim with 900 wins overall in his career and his first win at a home game in Daejeon, he has been easily attacked by rival teams since then. Time has passed to discuss ways to adjust to the league, but his performance is getting worse and worse.
No one would have known that Barria, whose earned run average for six seasons in the Major League was around 4 points (4.38), would record around 5 points (5.31) in Korea. Even moreover, he did not expect five innings to be too much. Some in the U.S. have pointed out that throwing to the bullpen in recent years makes it difficult to digest long innings, but he has shown weak performance in the early stages as he has lost a total of 11 runs in the first inning in the last five consecutive games.
Regardless of the reason, Hanwha, which had hoped to advance to the fifth round due to Barria’s poor performance, also faltered as it lost for the second straight time in 21 days. The player who was brought in as a match-winner for the fifth round has become a concern as he has hampered his team.
