How did William Cuevas, the long-serving foreign pitcher for the professional baseball team KT Wiz, overcome the nightmare of 10 earned runs to regain the form of a foreign ace?
On the 29th, Cuevas started the season's fourth game against the Doosan Bears in the 2025 Shinhan SOL Bank KBO League at Seoul's Jamsil Stadium, and pitched 6 innings with 2 hits allowed, 3 walks, 7 strikeouts, and no earned runs on 96 pitches to secure his second win of the season (2 losses).
After overcoming a bases-loaded crisis with 2 outs in the first inning by striking out Yang Seok-hwan, Cuevas found his rhythm again. In the second, third, and sixth innings, he retired the side in order, while easily overcoming threats in the fourth inning with no outs and the fifth inning with 1 out and a runner on first. Aside from the first inning, he faced no scoring threats at all. With a maximum velocity of 149 km/h fastball, along with sinkers, cutters, changeups, and curves, he pitched without allowing any earned runs.
After the game, Cuevas remarked, "Today is a really good day. This is because I showed a very poor performance in the last game. I should have shown a good performance today, and since the result is good, I want to achieve such results in the next game as well."
The poor performance Cuevas mentioned occurred during the game against the SSG Landers on the 23rd in Suwon. At that time, he started and pitched 4 innings, allowing 12 hits (3 home runs), 1 walk, and 10 earned runs, suffering the worst defeat.
Cuevas explained his rebound, saying, "After the last game, I had a good conversation with the analytics team. They pointed out my weaknesses from the last game clearly, which helped a lot in today's game. I thought it was something that can definitely happen in baseball. During my 17 years in baseball, this has happened about 3 to 4 times, but since it’s already in the past, I tried to forget it as quickly as possible."
Some say that Cuevas gave up 10 runs because he was not on the same page with catcher Jang Seong-woo during the SSG game. However, it was argued that instead of a miscommunication, Cuevas threw based on his own stubbornness rather than following the catcher's signals.
In response, Cuevas stated, "That was absolutely not the case. It was not a catcher issue, nor anyone else's issue. A lot happened that day. I had a bad game, and it's already in the past. I want to stop talking about that bad game; since I had a good game today, I want to think positively."
Cuevas attributed part of his success in this game to having a strong record against Doosan. He recalled his memory of pitching 6 scoreless innings in the wildcard playoff held at Jamsil Stadium last year.
Cuevas said, "I tried to quickly understand the tendencies of the Doosan hitters. After figuring out their tendencies, I tried to utilize those moments well," and added with a smile, "Since I pitch well against Doosan, I believed in myself and leveraged those aspects while pitching."
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