Ryu Hyun-jin trains to throw 50 pitches

“Ryu Hyun-jin’s condition is much better than the last year. He seems to have trained hard over the winter.”

Pete Walker, the pitching coach for the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball, highly praised Ryu’s condition. “He seems to feel a lot more comfortable this year compared to the last year, (the first season after he moved to the Toronto Blue Jays,” the coach said during a virtual press conference on Sunday local time. “He is already ready to throw 50 bullpen pitchers.”

This year is the first full season for Ryu after his transfer to the Toronto Blue Jays. Each team played only 60 games last year due to COVID-19. The South Korean played as a starting pitcher for 12 games or 67 innings, which was less than half compared to the previous season when he played for 29 games or 182 and two-thirds innings. As teams return to the normal schedule of 162 games this season, he should take the mound as the starting pitcher of the team for around 30 games.

Ryu has been preparing himself over the last winter, accordingly. After taking a month off since his return to South Korea in October last year, he resumed conditioning and weight training from November. He then moved to Jeju Island with warmer temperatures to do catch and pitch training for two weeks.


leper@donga.com