(News Focus) Go Woo-suk likely facing 3-way battle for closer job for Padres

By Yoo Jee-ho

SEOUL, Jan. 4 (Yonhap) -- Over the past five seasons in his native South Korea, right-hander Go Woo-suk has been the undisputed closer for the LG Twins. He led the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) with 42 saves in 2022. Since 2019, the year that Go became the full-time closer for the Seoul-based team, no KBO closer has collected more saves than Go's 139.

The 25-year-old has parlayed his KBO success into a two-year, $4.5 million contract with the San Diego Padres, who announced their acquisition of the hard-throwing reliever Wednesday (U.S. time). In San Diego, however, Go will not be handed the closer job right away. He will have to fend off not just one but at least two other pitchers for the role.

Go is the second prominent Asian reliever to join the Padres this winter. Just before Christmas, the Padres handed a five-year, $28 million contract to Japanese closer Yuki Matsui, who had 236 saves for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Nippon Professional Baseball over the past 10 seasons.

The Padres have been trying to bolster their bullpen all winter, after closer Josh Hader and reliever Nick Martinez both became free agents.

One incumbent reliever, Robert Suarez, has been pegged as the projected closer for 2024 in San Diego media. The 32-year-old journeyman has just one save over his two-year big league career, though he did collect 68 saves over five seasons in Japan.

Where Suarez may have an edge over Go and Matsui is his fastball velocity, especially in this age of fireballers out of the bullpen.

According to Baseball Savant, Suarez averaged 97.7 mph with his four-seam fastball. Go has been among the hardest-throwing relievers in the KBO, but his velocity number, when converted from kph to mph, has been around 95 mph. He has topped out at 97.6 mph.

Matsui doesn't fit the mold of a conventional major league closer, as his fastball sits in the low 90s. Matsui still had a high strikeout ratio thanks to his mix of forkball and slider.

Suarez mostly had a three-pitch mix of fastballs, changeups and sinkers in 2023, and threw only 20 sliders and five cutters all season. That devastating changeup limited opponents to a .080 batting average with a meager .200 slugging percentage.

Go has been a two-pitch reliever, pairing his fastball with a hard slider that sits in the low 90s. Go has relied on those two pitches well over 80 percent of the time throughout his career, while gradually introducing a curveball to his repertoire over the past three seasons.

After the Padres signed Matsui, the club's general manager, A.J. Preller, didn't immediately name the Japanese left-hander as the closer, instead saying he would pitch "somewhere at the back part of the game." Preller also said at the time that he would need to "see what other options come up this offseason."

One such option has turned out to be Go, who will have to prove his less-than-stellar numbers in an injury-plagued 2023 season were an aberration.

Go led the KBO with 42 saves in 2022 but was limited to just 15 in 2023, as he was limited to 44 innings, his second-lowest total since becoming the closer in 2019.

Go missed a couple of weeks at the start of the KBO season in April with shoulder inflammation, which had earlier kept him on the sidelines during the World Baseball Classic. Then Go missed almost the entire month of May with a lower back problem.

Go lost a tick off his average fastball velocity from 2022 to 2023. His walk rate jumped from a career-best 8.8 percent in 2022 to an alarming 11.6 percent in 2023, while his strikeout rate fell from a career-high 33.3 percent to 31.1 percent over the same stretch. The ERA soared from a career-best 1.48 in 2022 to 3.68 in 2023.

On the other hand, Go was a tad unlucky in 2023. The batting average on balls in play (BABIP) reached a career-high .356, a significant jump from a career-low .240 mark in 2022 -- indicating that batted balls that went right at fielders in 2022 went for more hits in 2023.

These peripheral numbers suggest Go had his best season in 2022 and worst season in 2023. Chances are that Go falls somewhere in between.

Hader has been one of the top closers in MLB for years, and he had 33 saves last year to rank fifth in the National League. However, the Padres blew a franchise-worst 28 saves in 2023. Though Hader himself is a strikeout artist, the Padres' bullpen as a unit ranked only 26th among the 30 MLB clubs with 575 strikeouts and 20th with 8.96 strikeouts per nine innings.

Their relievers issued 3.77 walks per nine innings to rank 22nd in that category.

In addition to Go, Matsui and Suarez, the Padres have other options, such as Enyel De Los Santos, who came over from Cleveland, and Steven Wilson, who led the Padres with 22 holds last year. Tom Cosgrove and Alek Jacob are other likely bullpen pieces.

jeeho@yna.co.kr
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