Ryan Feierabend is a name you may recognize. He pitched in the majors with the Mariners (2006-08) and the Rangers (2014). However, he was never seen as a key commodity on a team’s pitching staff.

The most he has ever thrown in a big-league season was 2008, when he had a 8.03 ERA in 49.1 IP with a 1-6 record. His career major league record stands at 2-11 with a 7.15 ERA in 113.1 IP. He also spent seven seasons in Triple-A and had a stint in the Independent League.

Players typically don’t make a lot of dough playing in MiLB or indy leagues. Quite often for players like him, heading to Asia becomes a viable, realistic option because the teams offer higher pay and guarantee playing time for their foreign players.

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And that’s the path that Feierabend chose after the 2014 season. The lefty signed with the Nexen Heroes of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) for a reported amount of $380,000. In a league where foreign players are expected to step in and become a cornerstone of the rotation or lineup right away, Feierabend did “passably” in his first two seasons in the KBO.

In 2015, he was just around league-average, going 13-11, 4.67 ERA in 30 starts (106.0 ERA+). He earned another one-year contract with Nexen for 2016 but was cut halfway through the season and immediately picked up by the KT Wiz. He went 7-13, 4.45 ERA (117.8 ERA+) total and the Wiz deemed him worthy of another contract, giving him $680,000 for 2017. Feierabend’s salary is far from an elite pay for foreign players in Korea.

For reference, the Hanwha Eagles signed RHP Carlos Villanueva for an announced amount of $1.5 million and the Doosan Bears re-signed their long-time foreigner RHP Dustin Nippert for $2.1 million. Making a fraction of those amounts, the expectations on Feierabend had not been high.

However in 2017, at age 31, Feierabend has evolved. As of June 13, he has made 11 starts and he’s gone 7-3, 1.67 ERA (leads the KBO) in 75.2 IP while allowing only 60 hits, walking nine and striking out 64. Even with the strikezone change that the league made for this season (which will be discussed later), the numbers are eyepopping.

Feierabend’s surge has been one of the hottest topics in the KBO this season. A lot of it is because he has featured a new pitch into the arsenal: the knuckleball.

Yep. We are talking about a lefty knuckleballer. In fact, Feierabend is the first ever pitcher in the KBO history to throw knuckleball regularly. Other pitchers like RHP Byeong-Yong Chae (SK Wyverns) and RHP Chris Oxspring (formerly with LG Twins, Lotte Giants and KT Wiz) have thrown it a few times but they never featured it as a part of their arsenal.

Feierabend claimed that he has known how to throw it since high school and always had it in his backpocket, but 2017 is the first time that he really featured it in games.

Here is what it looks like:

via GIPHY

And in slo-mo:

via GIPHY

The pitch above clocked at 119 kmph (73.9 mph). Per Statiz, his knuckler averages at 120.5 kmph (74.9 mph) and he throws it 23.2 percent of the time.

In 2016, he was a standard fastball/slider/changeup guy (55.1, 18.2 and 18.3 percent of the time, respectively). He still throws a good amount of fastball this season (44.4 percent) but he throws significantly less sliders (3.9 percent) and mostly baffles the hitters with a changeup/knuckleball combo.

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The pitch itself has been very effective. The hitters have swung at 63.1 percent of his knuckleballs — the most against any pitch — but have only hit .198 AVG with .271 SLG against it. Feierabend also has been able to throw it for strikes or locate it lower to induce swings-and-misses.

It should be noted that knuckleball is not the only factor into Feierabend’s surge. For one, he has attacked the edge of the strike zone. Per Naver, Feierabend leads the KBO in locating pitches in the 6.5 centimeters margin of the strikezone edge (32.3 percent), which might be a byproduct of a bigger strike zone that the league introduced this season. The KBO widened the zone after the Team Korea’s hitting fared poorly in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

As a result, the pitchers are allowing less runs (5.19 to 4.63 ERA league-wide), walking less (3.78 to 3.25 BB/9 IP) and striking out more (6.85 to 7.02 K/9 IP). However, despite the change, Feierabend’s numbers have improved so drastically that it’s hard not to give credit to the adjustments that he has made on his own.

In the first two KBO seasons, Feierabend produced OK-but-unspectacular results and was once released by a club. In order to endure and earn more stability in the KBO, he worked on and made the changes — which are paying off.

One important aspect of foreign players playing in Asian leagues (KBO, NPB, CPBL) is that not only their talent has to match well to the league to survive, but also they have to show willingness to learn and adjust.

Many players have entered these leagues with promise from their track record and talent but did not last long. On the other side, we have heard a lot about what Eric Thames learned in the KBO and took it to his success so far with the Milwaukee Brewers.

If Feierabend keeps up the performance, he will at least attract a higher pay and stability from the KT Wiz. Long-term, he could be looking at a better professional baseball legacy.