I'm glad I left Japan and came to Hanwha... Fonce's tears beyond Ryu Hyun-jin

I'm glad I left Japan and came to Hanwha... Fonce's tears beyond Ryu Hyun-jin

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The second-place Hanwha Eagles and the fifth-place SSG Landers shared a doubleheader one game each.

In the first game of a doubleheader against SSG of the 2025 Shinhan SOL Bank KBO League held at Hanwha Life Ball Park in Daejeon on Sunday, the Hanwha Eagles scored six hits in long and short lengths to secure a 1-0 victory. In the second game that followed, SSG made nine hits in long and short lengths to avenge its defeat in the first game through a 5-2 victory. Hanwha reduced its gap with the leading LG Twins to one game (28 wins and 17 losses), and SSG moved up to a joint fourth place (21 wins, one draw and 22 losses) along with the KIA Tigers and the KT Wiz.

Choi Jae-hoon, who hit a timely double to hit the left fence in the fourth inning in the first game, became the winner of the final hit, and Kim Seo-hyun made his 13th save. In the second game, Jung Joon-jae of SSG performed very well with three hits and three RBIs, including the final hit in the fifth inning.

In particular, the most talked about player in the 10 doubleheader games held on the day was by far Hanwha's Cody Ponce, who set the record for the most strikeouts in regular innings in the KBO League history and the most strikeouts in a game.

various records related to strikeouts

Baseball is a sport that can never be played alone. No matter how good a batter is, he or she can only hit a solo home run if there is no runner in front of him or her, and it is hard for a pitcher to secure a victory if he or she does not receive assistance from the batters and defense. However, fielders do not have much to do on the so-called "scratch day" when a pitcher with outstanding ball power is in a very good condition. This is because a pitcher strikes out most of the out count, giving fielders untimely rest while waiting for a hit.

"National Treasure Pitcher" Sun Dong-yeol, who pitched 1647 innings and recorded 1,698 strikeouts during his active career, also has many records on strikeouts. In June 1991, Sun Dong-yeol struck out as many as 18 against the Binggrae Eagles until the 13th inning of overtime, setting a record for the most strikeouts in a game ever. The late Choi Dong-won, Sun Dong-yeol and Lee Dae-jin held the record for the most strikeouts in regular innings, striking out 16 respectively in 1983, 1992, and 1998.
The record of most strikeouts in regular innings, which no one has seen in 11 years since Lee Dae-jin, was broken by "Korean Monster" Ryu Hyun-jin in 2010. Ryu Hyun-jin struck out as many as 17 while completing a complete game of one run in nine innings against LG at Cheongju Baseball Stadium on May 11, 2010. Ryu Hyun-jin, who had three more strikeouts than his 14 strikeouts in a game in July 2009, set a new KBO league record for the most strikeouts in a regular inning.

Even in the KBO League, where many outstanding foreign pitchers passed through, the record of the most strikeouts by foreign pitchers in a game remained at 14. Starting with Danny Batista, who played for Hanwha in 2013, striking out 14 times, Rick Vanden Hulk of the Samsung Lions in 2014, Henry Sosa of LG in 2018, Wilmer Font of SSG Landers in 2022, Adam Blotko of LG, and Riley Thompson of the NC Dinos last year struck out 14 times in one game.

And on Apr. 26, SSG fastball pitcher Drew Anderson tied the record for the most strikeouts by a foreign pitcher, striking out 14 in 6.1 innings at home against the Kiwoom Heroes. Anderson threw 98 pitches at the time, but Lee replaced Anderson after one out in the seventh inning, which SSG lost 1-2. And the record set by Anderson for the most strikeouts in a game by a foreign pitcher was broken by Ponce in less than a month.

A monster foreign pitcher who jumped over 'Korean Monster'

Ponce played for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Major League in 2020 and 2021 before moving to the Nippon-Ham Fighters in the Japanese professional baseball league in 2022 and playing for three years in Japan. Ponce also had a no-hitter in 2022 when he was at Nippon-Ham, but he did not have a successful career in Japan, with 10 wins and 16 losses and an ERA of 4.54 in three years. In particular, Ponce had difficulty adapting in Japanese clubs with a rather hard organizational culture.

Then, he signed a contract with the Hanwha Eagles for a total of 1 million dollars in December last year, and is playing "happiness baseball" in Daejeon this season. Ponce allowed six runs in 19 innings (2.84 ERA) in three games since the season's opening, but managed to secure victory in all seven games since then. During the same period, Ponce allowed five runs in 48 innings. His ERA in the last seven games is only 0.94 and he pitched five scoreless innings. Ponce is displaying performances that only enabled him to instigate others in the 1980s this season.

Ponce also showed a tremendous strikeout parade in the first game of the doubleheader against SSG on the 17th, completely overwhelming the SSG lineup. Ponce, who threw 113 pitches during eight innings on the day, allowed two hits, one walk and no run to SSG's batters by banking on fastballs with speeds of 157 kilometers per hour. Of the 24 outs that Ponce garnered on the day, a whopping 75 percent were strikeouts. Kim Kwang-hyun, the starting pitcher of SSG, pitched well by allowing one run in six innings, but failed to contain Ponce's formidable performance. 토토사이트

Ponce, who threw 97 pitches through the seventh inning, also took the mound in the eighth inning and struck out Ryan McBroom of SSG with three strikeouts, setting a tie for Ryu Hyun-jin's most strikeouts in a regular inning. Ponce, who struck out for the 17th time, suddenly wiped away tears after greeting Ryu Hyun-jin who was in the dugout. "After striking out 17, I suddenly got emotional thinking about my mother, who passed away in 2017," Ponce said in an interview after the game.

Ponce, who continued his no-hitter with 18 strikeouts throughout the eighth inning with two outs, faced a crisis of losing points due to consecutive hits, but ended the eighth inning by allowing no run. Ryu gave Ponce a bigger hug than anyone else and congratulated his teammate on his new record. Thus, the milestone that the "Korean Monster" had for 15 years was passed on to another monster pitcher, Ponce.