professional baseball Kiwoom Heroes Ariel Furado (28) showed an ace-like strong pitch.
Furado started the game against the KIA Tigers in the “2024 Shinhan Bank SOL Bank KBO League” at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on the 14th and recorded five hits, two walks, six strikeouts and one run in seven innings. 토토사이트
After receiving a hit from leadoff hitter Park Chan-ho in the top of the first inning, Furado struck out Kim Sun-bin and induced Kim Do-young to ground out to the second base to catch the leadoff man. Na handled the hit with a ground ball to the third base. After receiving a double from leadoff hitter Socrates Brito in the second inning, Furado was on the verge of a one-out, third base hit. Finally, Choi gave up the first run after a timely RBI single. Kim allowed strikeouts, but Choi Won-joon stole second to reach second base with two outs. Furado also got out of the crisis by striking out Lee Chang-jin.
With two outs and two outs in the third inning, Kim had a hit by Na Sung-bum and faced a crisis with two outs and runners on the first and third bases, but caught Socrates with a fly ball to the center field. With one out in the fourth inning, Choi walked and Kim Tae-gun’s hit made a shortstop error, putting him on the verge of a crisis with one out and runners on the first and second bases. Choi Won-joon’s steal to the third base made him to be on the first and third bases with one out, but Furado escaped the crisis by striking out both Lee Chang-jin and Park Chan-ho.
Furado hit a triple by Kim Do-young with one out in the fifth inning, but Na Sung-bum was caught with a strikeout, not out, and Socrates handled it with a ground ball to shortstop. In the sixth inning, leadoff hitter Lee Woo-sung was sent out by a third baseman’s catch error, but Choi Won-joon was treated with a fly ball to center field, and Kim Tae-gun was induced to make a double play against second baseman, ending the inning in an instant.
Even after taking the mound in the seventh inning, he neatly finished the inning with three outs. In the eighth inning when Kiwoom lost 0-1, he handed over the mound to Kim Dong-wook and finished the day’s mound. Kiwoom won 2-1 when Choi Joo-hwan hit a finishing home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.
With 97 pitches, Hurado used various pitching arsenals, including fastballs (39 pitches), changeups (23 pitches), sliders (11 pitches), two-seam (11 pitches), curveballs (9 pitches), and cutters (4 pitches) to block Kia’s batters. His maximum fastball speed was 148 kilometers per hour, and his strike rate was as high as 71.1 percent. Although he failed to become a winning pitcher, he performed his part by achieving quality start plus (three earned runs or fewer in seven innings).
After achieving quality start plus in two consecutive games, he said, “I think it was effective to throw various pitches. As usual, I tried to put as many strikes as possible on a course that was as low as possible offensively. I think that led to a high strike rate.” As for overcoming the crisis by striking out two consecutive batters with runners on the first and third bases with one out in the fourth inning, he said, “I thought I would definitely catch the next batter with a strikeout and pitched aggressively. I thought it was a mental battle when I had a runner, so I tried to focus only on my pitching.”
Furado has been active in 24 games (152 ⅓ innings) with 10 wins and 5 losses and an earned run average of 3.19. Furado’s foreign pitcher partner Enmanuel de Heyesus is also active in 23 games (132 ⅓ innings) with 11 wins and 7 losses and an earned run average of 3.33. Kiwoom ranks lowest in the league with 49 wins and 61 losses and a .445 winning percentage, but it is not easy for even top teams to secure a win in games where Furado and Heyesus start. Rather, some of the top teams are collapsed by Kiwoom due to Furado and Heyesus’ one-two punch.