How will Hwang Dong-ha (22, KIA Tigers) be utilized this season.
Among the five pitchers that Kia has sent to the Seattle Driveline in the U.S., Lee Eui-ri, Yoon Young-cheol, and Jung Hae-young are already the main pitchers of the first team. Left-hander Kwak Do-gyu and right-hander Hwang Dong-ha have been added to this list. Kwak Do-gyu is the card to add texture to the bullpen, and Hwang Dong-ha is the sixth starting pitcher.
Hwang Dong-ha is a right-handed pitcher who graduated from Impression High School and joined the team as the 65th in the second round of the seventh round in 2022. He started five times in the second half of the year due to injuries to starting pitchers in the 2023 season. He mostly played as a long relief pitcher in the first half, but was not deployed as a bullpen pitcher unless he was a temporary starter in the second half.
This proves that Kia considers Hwang a starting pitcher. Actually, Kia needs to nurture its own right-handed starters. Yang Hyun-jong, Lee Eui-ri, and Yoon Young-cheol are players who represent Korea or the national team, but they are all left-handed. Cho, who was selected in the first round of the 2024 Rookie Draft, plans to train fastball players as right-handed ones, but analysts say that it takes some time.
Therefore, at this point, Hwang Dong-ha should be considered the No. 1 prospective starter. As he is well known, he is a pitcher with clear strengths and weaknesses. It is an advantage that he is a pitcher with a fairly fast pitching tempo, optimized for the Peach Clock era. On the other hand, he is not a pitcher with clear killer content yet. When he started last year, he clearly struggled when the batting order went around once.
According to Statiz, a baseball statistics site, the average speed of fours in the 2023 season was 141.8 kilometers. Foursim and slider accounted for high while curve and splitter accounted for low levels. Foursim and splitter hit rates were 0.310 and 0.353, respectively. 랭크카지노주소 The team is likely to have considered such concerns from various angles this offseason, especially in the driving line.
If meaningful data is obtained from the driveline, the direction of Hwang Dong-ha is expected to be established. Basically, the advantage of a fast pitching tempo must be taken, and in that situation, a way to increase the power must be found. When the season begins, it is expected to be registered if an issue arises in the first team’s starting lineup after playing starting rotation in the Futures League. Or, there may be a situation in which the first team plays long-relief from the beginning and then moves to the starting lineup.
KIA’s first to fifth starters, which will lead to Will Crow, James Nail, Yang Hyun-jong, Lee Eui-ri and Yoon Young-chul, are powerful and powerful. The key is the adaptability and productivity of Crow and Nail. Kia has made all-out efforts to recruit foreign pitchers this winter by setting up a foreign scout organization directly under its leader in order not to repeat its failures as foreign players over the past two to three years.
Even so, there are many variables in the management of the mound in the long-term race, such as injury and side effects in adapting to the KBO league. Indeed, Mario Sanchez’s injury in the second half of the 2023 season was a huge burden to the team, which had fierce battle for the best of five. No team can hire just five starting pitchers in a long-term race. Variables always arise.
At that time this season, Hwang might be considered the top alternative. There are also ways to find another alternative while training many pitchers in the first and second teams, but it is true that they are curious about the effect of studying in Seattle. He is still 22, so his days are numbered. It may be difficult to completely change a player’s baseball career, but he can be satisfied with just the turning point of his baseball career.