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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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Lotte Giants headed to Japan after training in Taiwan. It has forged a strong friendship with Taiwan, which has visited for the first time in six years.
Lotte will hold its second spring camp in Miyazaki, Japan, from the 22nd to March 5th.
The last training session in Taiwan was a new challenge and investment for Lotte. I had a camp in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from 2018 to 2019, but the evaluation was not very good. Guam, which was recently the first camp site, also suffered from reduced efficiency due to bad weather and a lack of overall training facilities.
However, Tainan, who chose the new camp site after much consideration, was very positive. Tainan City's great facilities were outstanding enough to understand Tainan City's boast that it is looking for a professional baseball team.
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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There was no cold enough to make outdoor training difficult, and the scale and completeness of the main stadium, auxiliary stadium, indoor dome, and bullpen were different. Even if it rains occasionally, there was no shortage of limited defensive training such as hitting, long toss, and catcher at once due to indoor training facilities larger than Sangdong practice field. Both Tuta were able to thoroughly check their basic skills from the beginning and strengthen their basic physical strength through systematic training.
It is also a great achievement to greatly increase intimacy with the Taiwan Baseball League (CPBL). Lotte had two friendly matches against the Taiwanese national team, which will compete in the 2025 World Baseball Classic (WBC) qualifying round.
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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Although it was a practice game, he played a valuable game against Taiwan's best players ahead of the WBC challenge after winning the Premier 12 at Taipei Dome, the latest domed stadium. Taiwan sold 20,000 seats per game at Taipei Dome, where more than 40,000 people came in, and as a result, nearly 40,000 Taiwanese fans filled the stands in two games. For Lotte, it was an opportunity to gain unprecedented experience playing in the reality of 'overwhelming cheering inferiority'.
At the scene, the harmony between Korea and Taiwan shone, with the Taiwanese and Lotte cheerleaders mingling together and performing a joint performance. Rather, in line with the era of a large number of Korean cheerleaders entering Taiwan, there was an unusual scene in which the Taiwanese cheering squad danced to the Korean cheering song, such as "Jilpunggado", and Lotte cheering squad leader Jo Ji-hoon joined and drew enthusiastic cheers.
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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CPBL also actively cooperated with Lotte. Ahead of the national team's game, he had a deep communication with the team's leadership at the federation level, and promised cooperation in various fields in the future. In the Asian quarter, which will be introduced to the KBO League from 2026 season, Taiwan is an important point in that it is likely to become a foreign recruitment route along with the Japanese independent league.
Lotte finished its first camp in Taiwan on the 21st. After taking a day off in Incheon, he boarded a flight to Miyazaki, Japan, again from the 22nd. Pitcher Choi Joon-yong returned home to manage his injury, and pitcher Jin Hae-soo and catcher Park Jae-yeop joined the Futures squad. Instead, pitcher Hyun Do-hoon was added to the first-team camp.
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| photo courtesy of Lotte Giants |
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Lotte will start practicing in earnest through games against Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) teams in the second camp. Participating in the 2025 Guchun Miyazaki League, they will play Chiba Lotte Marines, Seibu Lions, Softbank Hawks, Orix Buffaloes and Doosan Bears, respectively.
In addition, the Korea-Japan Lotte Exchange, which resumed for the first time in 17 years under the full support of the group last year, will continue this year. There will be a friendly match on February 28 and a total of two matches on March 1 as part of the Guchun League.
Lotte's team plans to gradually expand mutual exchanges with Chiba Lotte, including dispatching pitchers Lee Min-seok and Chung Hyun-soo to the Chiba Lotte 1st-tier closing camp last year, and major leaders such as the general manager and the development team leader visiting each other's teams.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
