Lotte’s hot May… From now on, the ‘real match’

Coach Bae Young-soo leading the mound
“After playing 60 to 70 games, the key is performance”

Experience of a sharp drop last year, ‘Teacher on the other hand’
Pitching power should make up for the weakness in batting power

Professional baseball Lotte is spending May with a race that exceeds expectations. At every baseball field Lotte goes to, cheering seats are also heating up. However, inside the club, including the coaching staff, they are doing ‘Cheongjungdong’. It is an expression of calmly preparing for a long fight, probably because he knows very well that the ‘real match’ is just beginning.

Pitching coach Bae Young-soo, who is leading the Lotte mound this year, said at the beginning of this month, when the team was on the rise, “It is still now, but it is important to be on the ‘top’ even after playing 60 to 70 games. I think that will be the key,” he said.

Lotte played 36 games until last weekend and recorded a win rate of 0.611 (22 wins and 14 losses). The first section went well, and now we are entering the second section to reach 60-70 regular season games. About 30 matches should be played.

It is the turning point of the season from spring to summer, and it is the time to spend May and enter June. Lotte had a very difficult period last year. It ran well in the first 35 games with a win rate of 0.559 (19 wins, 1 draw and 15 losses), but collapsed with a win rate of 0.345 (10 wins, 1 draw and 19 losses) in the subsequent 30 games. Last year’s race is also presented as a kind of ‘anti-teacher’ model.

Lotte made a lot of preparations for this time, such as changing the training pattern, but the conditions are not very good. First of all, it is not the best power that was originally expected. Foreign hitter Jack Rex is out of the first team due to a knee injury, and Hwang Seong-bin, who injured his ankle, also needs a little more time to return. Lotte has been playing baseball in which certain player vacancies are not marked, such as filling the vacancy of Hwang Seong-bin twice since the opening with the performance of newcomer Kim Min-seok, but if the departure of key players increases and the period becomes longer, there will be no aftermath. Moreover, Jeon Jun-woo, the main hitter, was sluggish with a batting average of 0.234 and an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.613, making the weakness of the entire batting line more prominent.

There is a desire from within the club to hope that a ‘surprise star’ will emerge amidst the injury or sluggishness of key hitters. However, a player who makes a surprise performance cannot appear every time.

As a result, it seems that Lotte will have to defend the odds with a fight for the superiority of the mound for the time being. Lotte’s offense was frustrating enough that the team’s batting average was only 0.230 in six games last week, but the team’s ERA was stable at 3.40. In addition, foreign pitcher Dan Strayley was shaken with 6 hits and 5 runs (4 earned) in 5 innings against Sajik SSG on the 20th, but other starting pitchers generally pitched solidly. His weekly starting ERA was 2.80, second overall. Moreover, as the number of games increases, mound indicators are also on the trend of improvement. Lotte’s team ERA rose to 4.75 amidst the sluggishness of two foreign pitchers in April, but it improved markedly to 3.51 after May.토토사이트

What will Lotte’s ‘ending’ look like this season? If we play 30 more games, we will be able to find some answers.