Lotte Giants’ Kim Jin-wook (22) has reached a turning point in his career this year. Every year, he would start the season as a starter, only to be dropped to the bullpen due to repeated struggles.
Last year, he focused solely on the bullpen, but this year, he was removed from the first team plan before the season. After gaining enough experience in the second team, he was promoted to the first team, and until the day before, he had pitched 50⅓ innings in 11 games (10 starts) with a 3-0 record and a 4.65 ERA.
The situation was different against the Busan NC Dinos on the 7th. In the first inning, NC Davidson scored the first run of the game, but the team responded well in the second inning.
However, in the bottom of the second inning, heavy rain poured down. The game was suspended at 7:09 p.m. and only resumed at 8:05 p.m. after 56 minutes of suspension.
NC had the same problem. Starter Lee Jae-hak gave up five runs in the first inning alone, including back-to-back home runs by Go Seung-min (2 runs) and Yoon Dong-hee (3 runs).
Both teams have one thing in common: their bullpens are not strong. Both managers made the same choice. They wanted their starters to go at least a few more innings.
The result was a big loss for both teams.
Lee Jae-hak had the worst day of his career, allowing nine runs on eight hits and two walks in two innings. He gave up a run in the bottom of the second inning on a sacrifice fly by Jeon Jun-woo, and another run in the top of the third inning on back-to-back singles by Son Ho-young and Na Seung-yeop. Na Seung-yup’s home run completed the humiliation of the rare ‘nine runs in two innings’.
NC manager Kang In-hwa said, 온라인카지노사이트 “I was worried about whether I should make a substitution. But since Lee Jae-hak is an experienced pitcher, I dragged him out a little longer. The bullpen is made up of inexperienced players right now, so I pushed Lee Jae-hak because I believed in him,” he explained.
Lotte manager Kim Tae-hyung said,
“I think there was definitely an effect of the rain delay on Kim Jin-wook’s early collapse,” but added, “Even so, pitching coach (Joo Hyung-kwang) was thinking about changing him. He pitched two innings and didn’t think he needed to change, so he went with him. It will be an experience for Kim to deal with such a situation.”
“In the end, we had to change him because his pitching wasn’t going as well as we wanted, but our bullpen was going to be out. Kim Kang-hyun went out and pitched one inning on what was supposed to be a rest day, but it’s not a must-win game. We left out Kim Sang-soo and Kim Won-joong,” he recalled.
In the end, Lotte finished the game with Park Jin (1 inning), Han Hyun-hee (1 inning), Jin Hae-soo (1 inning), Koo Seung-min (1⅔ innings), Song Jae-young (1 inning), and Hyun Do-hoon (1 inning). “It was a comfortable situation because of the score difference, but it was not an easy game,” added Kim Tae-hyung.