Ko Woo-suk, 28, a KBO League alumnus now with the Minnesota Twins, has finally taken the mound in the big leagues.
Ko took the mound as the team's fourth pitcher in the top of the ninth inning of a 2026 Major League Baseball (MLB) home game against the Cleveland Guardians, held at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the 10th (Korea time), with the team trailing 2-4. He recorded one inning, one hit (one home run), one strikeout, and one run allowed.
He threw 18 pitches (nine fastballs, six splitters, three sliders), with a top fastball velocity of 95.7 miles per hour (about 154 km/h).
With this, Ko became the 30th Korean big leaguer to set foot on an MLB regular-season field since Park Chan-ho in 1994.
He is the 16th pitcher to do so, and the first in five years since Yang Hyeon-jong (now with the KIA Tigers), who appeared in the big leagues with the Texas Rangers in 2021.
Ko took the mound as the team's fourth pitcher, following Cody Funderburk. Facing the first batter, Daniel Schneemann, he threw a 93.6 mph (150.6 km/h) fastball as his first pitch, but it drifted high and outside.
He then continued the battle by repeatedly throwing fastballs into the strike zone, and induced a grounder to first base with a splitter on his fourth pitch.
The matchup with the next batter, Patrick Bailey, was disappointing. Bailey hammered an inside slider thrown on the second pitch with a count of one ball, and the ball sailed over the right-field fence.
After giving up his first home run in his MLB debut, Ko did not collapse further. Battling Steven Kwan to a full count, he got a swinging strikeout with a splitter on his 10th pitch.
He then induced a grounder to first base from Travis Bazzana on the second pitch, a fastball, for the out to close out the inning. Minnesota failed to turn the game around in its final at-bat in the bottom of the ninth and lost 2-5.
Ko, who had been the closer for the LG Twins in the KBO League, signed with the San Diego Padres in 2024 on a 2+1-year deal worth up to $9.4 million (about 14.17 billion won), but bounced around the minor leagues before being traded to the Miami Marlins in May of that year.
Less than a month after the move, he was designated for assignment (DFA) and reassigned to the minor leagues.
In 2025, he was released outright and signed a minor league deal with the Detroit Tigers, was released again in November of that year, but signed another minor league deal with Detroit about a month later.
Then, after moving to Minnesota via a cash trade early this month, he was added to the big league 26-man roster on the 8th, and finally realized his dream in the game on the 10th.
