'Tied for 2nd place' Lotte, the real spring has come? There is evidence that it is different from baseball
'Tied for 2nd place' Lotte, the real spring has come? There is evidence that it is different from baseball
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It is different from baseball under former coach Larry Sutton, who always ended up as a 蛇尾. In the second season under Kim Tae-hyung, Lotte quickly shook off its slump in the early days of this season and jumped to a tie for second place.토토사이트
Lotte won the away game against the Doosan Bears of the 2025 Shinhan Bank SOL Bank KBO League 7-4 at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul on Sunday, continuing its third consecutive win of the season. At the same time, Lotte posted 16 wins, one draw and 12 losses in 29 games, moving up to the second place jointly with the Samsung Lions.
Lotte is trailing the first-place LG Twins by four games, once again ranking second after April 18. It is also the best trend in the league with the fourth-place Hanwha Eagles with eight wins and two losses in the last 10 games.
The "nightmare of spring baseball," which had been a sign of revival for two years, has completely melted and disappeared. Up until the beginning of the season, the team showed sluggish performance similar to that of manager Kim Tae-hyung in March-April 2024, the first season of the Korean baseball league. In fact, Lotte only garnered five wins (one draw and nine losses) in 15 games, starting with the loss to LG in the opening two consecutive games.
As the winning rate was only 0.357, the league ranking also fell to ninth place. Although it was at the beginning of the season, there was a lot of concern considering that it had a difficult early season after a severe slump in March and April last year.
In fact, Lotte ended up at the bottom of the league with eight wins, one draw and 21 losses (winning rate 0.276) through April after the season's opening. Since then, Lotte has rebounded reliably with a winning rate of 0.565 in May and a winning rate of 0.609 in June, but failed to beat other teams due to lack of momentum.
In the end, as the summer began, the team recorded a 6-14 winning percentage of 0.300 in July, falling to the bottom of the monthly winning percentage, effectively moving away from the competition for fall baseball from an early period. Even after that, Lotte failed to recover the winning and losing margins of the crashed period, even though it had been doing well by playing good baseball.
However, the most encouraging thing is that Lotte has been competing for the top spot since the beginning of the season, rapidly recovering from its slump in the early days of the season. At the same time, this is showing other sustainable possibilities, which are different from those of Lotte, which was strong only in spring, when Sutton was a coach.
In fact, Lotte earned an unwelcome nickname, "Bomde (Lotte, which is only good in spring)" in the season when Sutton, a U.S.-born coach, took the helm of Lotte. This is because Lotte in the 2022 and 2023 seasons has repeatedly performed well until spring and has fallen since then, except for the 2021 season when he was promoted from the second-tier coach during the season.
In the 2022 season, Lotte ranked second until April, and took the lead in May of the 2023 season. Lotte's fans gave a lot of support to Lotte's hot spring run. In 2023, Lotte's baseball team showed a great deal of strength, especially to the extent that the expression "gigase" became a kind of "meme." However, Lotte ended the season by ranking eighth in the 2022 season and seventh in the 2023 season.
Around this time of year, Lotte's performance is similar to that of the 2022 and 2023 seasons. However, his unshakable recovery despite the team's difficulties in the early stages of the season makes one feel the potential of the "team that learned through failure."
Above all, it is noteworthy that the team's overall power has become solid, not a temporary rise or some players' condition is "crazy." First of all, key players who should "play their part" in each position and key positions are active. In addition, new players who have joined the team, veteran players who have been struggling with sluggishness and injuries, and prospects who have begun to establish themselves for years since the 2020s are showing good performances side by side.
In the starting lineup, Park Se-woong is playing an ace role by leading the starting rotation with a 2.87 ERA, harvesting five wins (one loss), the lone lead in multiple wins. Closing pitcher Kim Won-joong, who was somewhat sluggish last season, is tied for the league's relief with eight saves and a 1.32 ERA in 12 games. In the bullpen, Jung Chul-won, who joined after moving from Doosan to Lotte in a trade this season, is playing a nine-hold role, the league's lone lead.
In addition, infielder Jeon Min-jae, who joined with Jeong Cheol-won, is poised to emerge as a new trade hit product for Lotte with a surprise performance by ranking first in the batting average (0.379). Reyes, who set new hits last year, and veteran Jeon Jun-woo are also gradually improving. Above all, Yoon Na-go-hwang (Yoon Dong-hee, Na Seung-yeop, Ko Seung-min, and Hwang Seong-bin) of Lotte's batting lineup last year, which had some ups and downs in the early days of the season, is also gradually improving his explosive power by gradually boosting his condition. Lotte has emerged as the No. 1 player in the team's batting average (0.284). He was another leader of the team's batting average last year
The home turf issue, which has been Lotte's biggest weakness for years, also shows that Yoo Kang-nam, who had been at the level of FA eating and running for the past two seasons, is slowly getting out of the tunnel. Yoo Kang-nam, who signed a large contract of 8 billion won in FA three years ago, has not been able to do his part due to sluggishness and injuries over the past two years. Last year, he lost his main position by hitting 0.191 in 52 games. Yoo Kang-nam, who was then, is playing a surprising role this year with a batting average of 0.322/on-base percentage of 0.406/base percentage of 0.475 in 24 games. Healthy starting catcher Yoo Kang-nam was also what Lotte desperately wanted.
The difference from Lotte's spring baseball under former coach Sutton is that players in Lotte's major positions and several players in positions are showing good performances at the same time, emerging as league leaders. In addition, unlike the time when injured players occurred in the good atmosphere, they escaped from the difficulties that occurred at the beginning of the season, and the persistent and powerful baseball, which showed good times last year, is reappearing in an early period.