The Lotte Giants, who were eager to strengthen their power last winter, are raising concerns by exposing uneasy factors one after another just one week before the opening of the regular season.
Lotte’s biggest weakness is defense. Both the infield and outfield defense were not good. Last year’s defensive power is partially measured by the difference between team earned run average (ERA) and defense irrelevant earned run average (FIP). Compared to FIP (3.61, 2nd), ERA (4.47, 9th) was significantly lower. The FIP calculation formula includes indicators that the pitcher is responsible for, such as home runs, strikeouts, and walks. This is one of the reasons why Park Se-woong failed to stand out in the ERA (3.89, 18th place) despite recording an outstanding FIP (2.87, 4th place).안전놀이터
Lotte, who had not been able to play fall baseball for five consecutive seasons until last year, started tempering early with the finishing camp. In the spring camp, he repeated high-intensity training and tried to strengthen his defense. However, the content is not good in the demonstration game. In particular, against Daegu Samsung Lions on the 21st, the defense was greatly shaken. Several uneasy factors came out at once, such as the handling of the batted ball, the throwing ball, and the explosive battle of the battery. There were also encouraging scenes, such as left fielder Hwang Seong-bin following a ball that landed at an ambiguous point to the end and allowing a hit after a span of time, but there were not a few empty mistakes.
In the bottom of the 4th inning, where the score was 1-4, center fielder Ahn Kwon-soo at first base was unable to deal with Samsung Lee Seong-gyu’s ordinary frontal hit. He seemed to care more about the runner than the ball in front of him. In the bottom of the 5th inning, first baseman Koh Seung-min was unable to respond quickly to Samsung Kim Jae-sung’s ground ball. Even though it was a fast hit, it is unfortunate that it bounced after being hit on the thigh that was quite out of the mitt. In addition, there were a lot of homework to be solved, such as foreign player Jack Rex’s throwing error, Yoo Kang-nam and Yoon Myung-jun’s battery’s catch anxiety and wild fighting, and Yoon Dong-hee’s fistfight.
On the 18th and 19th, there were many stealing bases in the two consecutive matches against the LG Twins and resignation. LG succeeded in 10 in two games. Lotte gave away 7 stolen bases on the 18th when Ji Ji-wan and Lee Jung-hoon wore masks, and 3 stolen bases on the 19th when Yoo Kang-nam played. Yoo Gang-nam, who had a low stealing rate last year with 17.3%, worked hard to make up for his weaknesses with Lotte battery coach Choi Gyeong-cheol last winter, but did not get the desired result, such as a big miss. Lotte, who failed to develop a catcher, expected framing and stable defense when signing a free agent (FA) contract with Yoo Kang-nam. Regarding the stolen base judge, I thought it would be different if I shared responsibility with Lotte pitchers, but I was uneasy in this demonstration game.
Lotte is at the bottom with 1 win, 1 draw and 6 losses in 8 exhibition games. The results of the demonstration games and the regular season results are irrelevant. Even if the pitcher’s condition is poor right now, there will be no problem as long as he matches well with the opening. However, it is regrettable that the weaknesses of last year were revealed again. Lotte’s demonstration game inflation batting ratio (DER) is the lowest at 0.645. There is no big difference from last year’s regular season (0.649, 10th place).