(Yonhap Interview) Giants starter Beasley rides sweeper to early KBO success: 'I trust myself more than anything'
2026.04.17 09:10
(Yonhap Interview) Giants starter Beasley rides sweeper to early KBO success: 'I trust myself more than anything'
By Yoo Jee-ho
SEOUL, April 17 (Yonhap) -- Having previously pitched in Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), Lotte Giants right-hander Jeremy Beasley arrived in South Korea with no shortage of self-confidence.
The 30-year-old right-hander believes his best stuff can keep the best hitters in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) in check, whether they bat right-handed or left-handed.
"I've been very happy with my execution. I've been throwing a ton of strikes and that's huge for me," Beasley told Yonhap News Agency on Thursday before the Giants' road game against the LG Twins at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul. "I feel like my pitches have been in a very good spot. My velocity has been in a very good spot and overall, my health is in a very good spot."
Beasley carried a 1-0 record and a 4.20 ERA into his Friday evening start against the Hanwha Eagles. That ERA is a bit inflated by his subpar second outing, in which Beasley allowed six runs on 10 hits in four innings against the SSG Landers.
In his two other starts, Beasley held the Samsung Lions and the Kiwoom Heroes to one earned run over 11 innings combined, with 12 strikeouts and only two walks.
"I had a little bit of a blip in the second game," Beasley recalled. "Crazy enough, I was actually very happy with how I pitched. Just the results weren't great. I was very motivated after that game, especially going into the Kiwoom game."
Beasley's bread-and-butter pitch has been his sweeper, a variant of the slider with a more pronounced horizontal movement. He throws it about 36 percent of the time, his second-highest usage rate behind only the four-seam fastball (38.5 percent).
Beasley said he threw a primitive version of the sweeper a few years ago before it became all the rage in baseball and admitted it "wasn't very good." Then he finally figured it out while in Triple-A in 2022.
Right-handed pitchers often stay away from the sweeper against left-handed hitters because the pitch tends to move toward the inner part of the plate for them. Beasley isn't one such pitcher, though.
"I trust myself more than anything. So I trust that my best pitch is going to always play against whoever," he said. "It's definitely a pitch that, if thrown right, can be a weapon."
Beasley said the sweeper is not necessarily a swing-and-miss pitch but more of a "get-me-over pitch," something that pitchers throw hoping to get a strike call when they fall behind in the count. A pitcher's ability to change the shape of the sweeper can make all the difference, Beasley added.
"I use different variations of the pitch and I'm able to change the shapes and change the velocity," he said. "And I feel like that's a huge part of my game."
Beasley's wicked sweepers have induced some stunned looks on the faces of left-handed hitters, including Lewin Diaz of the Samsung Lions, who launched a KBO-best 50 home runs last year.
"I think it's really hard to see it out of my hand. I don't know why," Beasley said with a smile.
Beasley, who went 10-8 with a 2.82 ERA in 40 games for the Hanshin Tigers from 2023 to 2025, said KBO hitters have presented him with a different challenge than those in the NPB.
"In Japan, the baseball is dead in a way. So you can kind of get away with mistakes," he said. "Hitting here has gotten so much better and teams have been getting so much better. I think that just is a testament of them wanting to find more out of themselves. I think that the swings are very similar to Japanese hitters but everybody has their own identity in a way. It's very similar to American baseball."
jeeho@yna.co.kr
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