The foreign ace, who had a retirement ceremony against KT on the 14th, failed to take the last mound
Doosan beat kt at home to further ignite the last-minute ranking competition of the season.
The Doosan Bears, led by head coach Lee Seung-yeop, beat the KT Wiz in the 2024 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul on the 14th to win a thrilling 2-1 victory. Doosan, which had been sluggish in the last 10 games with three wins and seven losses to fall to fifth place, 1.5 games behind KT, won the game after a fierce pitching competition, recovering a 50% win rate and reducing its gap with the fourth-place KT to half a game (66 wins, two draws and 66 losses).
Doosan’s native ace Kwak Bin won his 13th victory of the season with two hits, five strikeouts, five strikeouts, and one run, while Kim Taek-yeon, who was in charge of five out counts, recorded her 18th save. In the batting lineup, Doosan had a very meaningful time on the day, with Jung Soo-bin, who hit a timely hit in the middle of the third inning, becoming the winner of the final hit. It was the retirement game and retirement ceremony of Dustin Nippert, the best foreign pitcher in KBO League history who left Doosan at the end of the 2017 season.
Foreign Pitchers Didn’t Reach 100 Wins
Among pitchers who recorded double-digit wins this year, foreign pitchers account for as much as 60 percent (Sept. 15). It is no longer news that foreign pitchers play the central role every year in starting pitchers of each team. However, there is only one foreign pitcher who has recorded more than 100 wins in his career. This means that Nippert displayed unrivaled performance in the KBO league, but it also means that it is not easy for foreign pitchers to live a long life in the KBO league.
Daniel Rios, who joined the KIA Tigers in 2002 and was traded to Doosan in 2005, won 90 games during his six years in the KBO league and was selected as regular league MVP in 2007 when he recorded 22 wins, 5 losses and a 2.07 ERA. Rios, who had nothing left to achieve in the KBO League, moved to the Yakult Swallows in Japanese professional baseball ahead of the 2008 season, but was infamously expelled when he was caught using banned drugs in Yakult.
The third-highest winning foreign pitcher in the KBO League was Henry Sosa from the Dominican Republic, who played for eight years through four teams. Sosa, who joined KIA in 2012, was crowned the winner of the Nexen Heroes (now Kiwoom) in 2014 and won 40 games for the LG Twins from 2015 to 2018. He then joined the SK Wyverns as an alternate foreign pitcher in 2019 and added nine wins, recording a career-high 77 wins.
Andy Van Hekken, the “left-hander special” that the Heroes boasted, played for the Heroes twice, winning 73 games in six seasons. Van Hekken, who joined Nexen in 2012 and won 58 games in four years, including 20 in 2014, joined Japan’s Seibu Lions in 2016 but returned to the Heroes in July that year after a slump of 4.631. Van Hekken ended his active career after playing in the Taiwan League in 2018 after adding 15 wins by 2017.
Casey Kelly (Louisville Batts), who was on the mound as an LG uniform until mid-July, is also tying for the fourth most wins as a foreign pitcher along with Van Hekken with 73 wins. Kelly served as LG’s ace player from 2019 to 2022, nicknamed “Jamsil Jesus” by fans, and led LG to win the Korean Series last year. However, he failed to meet expectations with five wins, eight losses and 4.51 this season, and ended his five-and-a-half-year career in Korea.
Nippert Didn’t Get a Chance to Play in Retirement
After failing to renew contract with foreign ace Calvin Jimenez, who recorded 14 wins in 2010, Doosan recruited a new foreign pitcher just ahead of the 2011 season. With his tall height of 203 centimeters, Nippert made headlines by being an “active big leaguer” who was included in the World Series roster for the Texas Rangers in 2010. He also showed off his prowess as a “active big leaguer” since his first year as a member of Doosan.
Having recorded 15 wins in his first season in Korea, Nippert was Doosan’s ace with 52 wins over four years until 2014. In 2015, he only had six wins in the regular season due to shoulder and thigh injuries, but he led Doosan to a victory in the Korean Series for the first time in 14 years by allowing two runs in 32.1 innings and posting a cartoonish performance of three wins and 0.56 wins in five fall baseball games.
Nippert led Doosan to its second consecutive Korean Series title with 22 wins, 3 losses and 2.95 in 2016, sweeping the MVP of the regular league. However, even after winning 14 games in the regular season in 2017, Nippert collapsed by allowing seven runs in 5.1 innings in Game 5 of the Korean Series, and his contract with Doosan was canceled after the end of the season. After moving to Kt in 2018, Nippert became the first foreign pitcher to record 100 wins and 1,000 strikeouts on June 29 that year, but his contract failed again after the season ended.
Six years have passed since Nippert left the mound and seven years since he left Doosan, and Doosan held a belated retirement game through a game against KT on Wednesday. Although he is a foreign player who left the league a long time ago, Nippert played his retirement game as a “player” who can participate in the game as he was included in the special entry. However, the two teams had a fierce one-point game from the beginning, and Nippert had no chance to take the mound.
Not to mention Nippert himself, baseball fans who filled Jamsil Baseball Stadium must have wanted to see him take the mound “for the last time.” However, it was not easy for Doosan, which has a fierce competition for rankings at the end of this season, to put Nippert on the mound in a one-point game. Although his last appearance on the mound was canceled, baseball fans will remember Nippert’s name as the best foreign pitcher in the history of the KBO League. 메이저사이트
