After winning the bronze medal at the Under-18 Baseball World Cup, the team has returned home. Pitcher Kim Taek-yeon, a key player in the victory, pitched for five consecutive days, sparking controversy, but the team’s coach, Lee Young-bok, defended the rules.안전놀이터

Reporter Choi Jae-hoon reports.

<Reporter

After winning the bronze medal at the Under-18 Baseball World Cup for the first time in four years, the players are back with big smiles on their faces.

[Go Korea!]

The shining star was pitcher Kim Taek-yeon.

She pitched in six of the team’s nine games, striking out 29 batters and posting a 0.88 ERA, and was named the tournament’s best relief pitcher.

Most notably, she took the mound in the third-place game on the 10th, shutting down the U.S. bats for seven innings with nine strikeouts to earn the complete-game victory.

Kim’s performance, in which he took the mound every day for the final five days and threw 178 pitches, also sparked a “grueling controversy.

Kim is the only pitcher in the tournament to pitch for five consecutive days.

[Kim Taek-yeon/U-18 National Baseball Team Pitcher: I’m always confident in my physical strength and things like that, so if I can throw, I think it’s natural that I should throw because I’m representing Korea].

Lee Young-bok countered that he followed the rules.

[Lee Young-bok/U-18 National Baseball Team Manager: Those (tournament) rules were made for the players not to overexert themselves, so I don’t have a big problem with them playing according to them].

Following the deaths of Kwak Bin in 2017 and Kim Seo-hyun last year, the “overuse controversy” of youth national team aces has led to calls for measures to protect young players.