“I don’t know what my future will be like, but I hope to see you again.”
KT Wiz foreign pitcher Wes Benjamin (31), who finished his third season in Korea, thanked his fans and said goodbye.
Benjamin posted a black-and-white photo of his back showing his jersey number on his SNS account on the 14th, leaving a message for the fans. “I was so grateful that I could spend the last three years here. Suwon is always my hometown,” he said. “Thank you to KT and all the fans who helped make this season possible. I don’t know what my future will be like, but I hope we can meet again.”메이저사이트
Benjamin, who signed an annual $331,000 (about 450 million won) contract with KT as a substitute for William Cuevas (33), who left in May 2022 due to an injury, played as the team’s left-handed ace with a 5-4 record and a 2.70 ERA in 17 games (96 ⅔ innings) that year.
Benjamin, who had a successful first season as a substitute, re-signed with KT for a total of $1.3 million (about 1.766 billion won), a four-fold increase in ransom after the 2022 season. In his second year in the KBO League, he pitched 160 innings in 29 games in the 2023 season, showing an unchanged performance with 15 wins (second in the league) and six losses with a 3.54 ERA and 157 strikeouts (fourth in the league). In particular, he led KT’s rise in the second half (12-6-3 ERA) with brilliant pitching, helping his team jump from 10th to 2nd place.
In December last year, Benjamin signed a deal with KT for a total of 1.4 million U.S. dollars, which will accompany KT for its third season. “Benjamin is a proven left-hander in the KBO league, and I hope he will continue to focus on starting pitchers in the next season as well,” KT general manager Na Do-hyun said after renewing his contract.
2024, however, was a little different from the previous two seasons. Although he recorded 11 wins (eight losses) in 28 games (149 ⅔ innings), his earned run average soared to 4.63. At the game against the Hanwha Eagles on March 31, his second pitching in this season, he displayed shocking performance of 11 runs allowed in three innings. He found stability afterwards, but the gap between the days when he threw well and the days when he collapsed was huge. The number of homers he hit has more than doubled (28) from the number of homers he hit in 2023.
In particular, it was shaken by one win, one loss and an 8.34 ERA in five games in September, affecting KT’s close competition to the end of the season. In the second game of the wild card game, he rebounded with three hits, six strikeouts and no runs in seven innings against the Doosan Bears, but in the third game of the semi-playoff, he was shaken by five innings of six hits, two homers and five runs (four earned runs) against the LG Twins, who showed off their “natural enemy.” Like last year, he continued to be an “LG killer (5 wins, two losses and an ERA of 1.66 in 10 games in total) during the regular season, but his killer instinct disappeared in fall baseball (seven hits, one homer and four runs in five innings of the 2023 Korean Series).
Benjamin, who wrapped up his third season, left a thank-you and goodbye to his fans through SNS. It may be an ordinary greeting left after returning to the U.S. after the season, but his performance in the 2024 season was a bit disappointing so that he felt the future was uncertain. Attention is focusing on whether the “left-handed ace” of the Wizards Corps will be able to become a long-term foreign player who will play in the KBO League in the 2025 season.