Change to Team Elko? A foreign hitter with a three-time MVP-class champion who almost got kicked out amid strong criticism, needs patience...
Apr 28, 2025
|
It is about Lewin Diaz (29), a home run RBI Samsung Lions foreign hitter.
If you look at the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) batter rankings, they are all blue.
Diaz is winning three gold medals in home runs (11), RBIs (30), and slugging percentage (0.681). He has a batting average of 327, an OPS of 1.039, and a scoring batting average of 364. If you keep running like this, you will be able to aim for the league MVP.
Samsung batters' strides, including Koo Ja-wook (26) and Kim Sung-yoon (8), and Lee Jae-hyun (28) are notable.
|
He has six homers and 15 RBIs in six recent games. The figure is unbelievable.
It's not just a lot of home runs. All of the last three games have been three-hit games with six multi-hit games. He is 15 for 27 in six games. He has a batting average of 556 percent.
All of this power came from the head coach's words.
On the 19th, Samsung manager Park Jin-man approached Diaz in training and hinted at it.
"I think I have a lot of greed for home runs, so when I'm not in a good condition, I have to connect to the back and solve it."How about hitting it with a direction on the left-center side?" he said lightly.
Diaz was a genius. I understood it perfectly, and I immediately put it into action.
|
What was the secret. It's futilely simple. It is the basics of batters, attacking strikes.
In a broadcast interview, Diaz said "I was going to hit all the balls until the previous week, but now I'm only going to hit strikes" In the meantime, "I'm doing it with a direction in the middle rather than thinking of pushing it in particular.", he explained. Asked about mechanisms or technological changes, he flatly denied "No".
|
Like other teams, Samsung is always preparing a list of alternative foreign players in preparation for sudden injuries or long-term sluggishness beyond the limit. It's a theoretical story. It is unreasonable to interpret it as 'alternative alien list = immediate replacement'.
However, after Diaz's brilliant performance at the beginning of the season, the public opinion of the replacement soared as the slump continued for a while. The name of Tim Elko (27), a promising first baseman of the Chicago White Sox right-handed, was also specifically mentioned.
It happened because there was no fundamental trust in Diaz, who played very short in the KBO League. Last year, a player who stepped on Korean soil as a substitute for Kadinez (currently Kiwoom), who was deployed from the second half as a substitute for McKinnon's replacement, and a substitute amid the controversy over the poor performance caused by this.
He was brought in in a hurry, but it was more than expected. He was recognized for his long shot and outstanding defense. He succeeded in renewing his contract by throwing confidence with five home runs in nine postseason games.
|
The same goes for Diaz. Explosiveness like the current active volcano cannot continue throughout the season.
However, the depth of the slump and how much the period can be minimized when the condition declines are the way to prevent 'Exit Again' and become a foreign hitter of confidence. To this end, it is necessary to remember Park Jin-man's advice of "When you're in a bad condition, turn it back and have a left-center direction."
Reporter Jung Hyun-seok hschung@sportschosun.com
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
