Kim Do-young's 5th-year fight chicken that didn't avoid 40 home runs...Hope Blooming Amid Despair On Lotte's Mound, Why Are We Looking forward to 2025
Kim Do-young's 5th-year fight chicken that didn't avoid 40 home runs...Hope Blooming Amid Despair On Lotte's Mound, Why Are We Looking forward to 2025
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The Lotte Giants had a hard time on the mound this year. Charlie Barnes, Aaron Wilkerson, and foreigners did their part. The two were among the top two players in the league. However, other native players showed poor performance.메이저사이트
Park Se-woong, who had to serve as the ace pitcher for native players, stirred anxiety by displaying up-and-down pitching from the middle of the season. Na Kyun-an and Lee In-bok, who had to serve as starting four to five players, failed to join the team early on due to poor performance. Notably, Na Kyun-an was even given disciplinary action as she became embroiled in controversy over her personal history before the season and her personal life during the season.
The situation was even worse for the bullpen. Closer Kim Won-joong kept his position, but failed to keep his team's victory at a critical juncture, putting his team in a quagmire. Koo Seung-min, who was the duo of Kim Won-joong and his soul, also failed to instill faith in Kim as he suffered ups and downs throughout the season. His dependence on Kim Sang-soo was inevitably severe throughout the season.
Many injured. Rookie pitcher Jeon Mir had sensational performance in the early days of this season, but failed to make the first team roster in the second half due to poor performance and injury. Choi, who was a must-win candidate, took the surgery table to recover from shoulder pain, which he had been suffering from. Choi, who had shown good performance as a long relief pitcher, was also sidelined in the end due to cartilage damage in his right shoulder.
It's not that he didn't have a new face. Kim Jin-wook, a left-hander in his fourth year who failed to display his potential, secured the starting position once and completed the starting rotation without leaving until the end of the season. Catcher-turned-pitcher Kim Kang-hyun also brightened up the possibility by playing the role of a chasing team. And the best player on the Lotte mound this year was Park Jin (25), a fifth-year pitcher who was not expected much.
Park Jin, a Busan High School native who joined the second round of the rookie draft in 2019, made a full-fledged appearance in the first team this year. After playing only two games in the first team in 2019, he immediately resolved his military service by serving in the active duty.
From 2021 to 2023, he appeared more in the second division than in the first division. He played in only six games in the first division until last year. This year, however, he pitched in 38 games, recording a record of two wins, four losses and one save with an ERA of 4.38 in 49 ⅓ innings.
He quietly survived from this year's spring camp to the opening entry. Although he served in the second division twice, he has been in the first division since June. Since then, he has had an opportunity to play the role of a chasing team. In the match against Changwon NC Dinos on July 28, closing pitcher Kim Won-joong committed a blon save, but scored four runs in the top of the extended 10th inning to take the lead 10-6. Then, Kim Kang-hyun and Jin Hae-soo caused himself a crisis with runners on the first and second bases with no outs. In the bottom of the 10th inning, Park Jin-young took the mound with runners on the first and second bases loaded with no outs. In a crisis, Park Jin-young recorded one strikeout and no run in one inning to post his first save since his debut.
Park was slowly put under pressure, and started at the end of the season when he lacked the starting lineup for the rest of the games. It wasn't that difficult for him to adapt to the long innings, as he had been receiving starting lessons while in the second division for a month in May. In his first start against Incheon SSG on Sept. 11, he finished the game with four hits, one walk, and four strikeouts in three ⅔ innings. A successful starting debut.
The game against LG on the 17th was bad with six hits, one walk, one strikeout and three runs in three ⅓ innings, but he won his first start win against KIA on the 25th with four hits, no four walks, seven strikeouts and one run in six innings.
Although it was the time when he was eliminated from the fall baseball league, it was a meaningful game for Park Jin. Above all, KIA Tigers' Kim Do-young was challenging 40-40 for the first time as a native player during this period, with 38 home runs and 40 steals. Park Jin did not avoid Kim Do-young and went head-to-head. He allowed his first at-bat triple in the first inning and had a left-handed hit in the third inning, but he struck out swinging in the last opponent in the bottom of the sixth inning.
Looking back at the time, Park Jin-young said, "I tried to throw without thinking about challenging for 40 home runs. If I get hit, it's right, so I tried to keep playing without avoiding it."
Manager Kim Tae-hyung said of Park Jin, "It's not that fast to catch the ball, but it seems to have strength. It's not easy to hit the ball with a straight hit. The RBI is good and the balance is good," adding, "The experience of starting and going out to the bullpen will help you." I think I've felt something, but I hope I'll prepare a good sense and show a good performance next year."
Looking back on this season, Park said, "Last year, I was passive. I lacked control," adding, "I think I got a good result because I threw as many strikes as possible and threw as I thought I was attacking batters while supplementing what I felt last year."
"I thought my ball worked as I threw in the first team this year, and I gained confidence," he said, adding, "I thought it was the beginning of my career this year, but I thought a lot about how to prepare for next year."
For now, he saw the possibility this year and gained confidence that his ball definitely worked. He had experience of failure but gained more experience from success. As he clearly caught the eye of head coach Kim Tae-hyung, he has no choice but to agonize over what position he will take next year. There are many attractive aspects, including consistency in the bullpen and a sense of stability in the starting lineup. As such, Park's performance was promising. For this reason, we have no choice but to look forward to 2025.