5 Billion ↑ FA Biggest Fish Confidence with Reason...The defense, it's not a cheeky thing
Jul 08, 2025
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KIA Tigers shortstop Park Chan-ho flew high in offense and defense while his team went from fourth place to second place alone last week with four wins and two losses. He proved why he is considered the league's top shortstop by instinctively chasing the ball and throwing it to first base exactly from a very long distance and eliminating it from the pile by momentarily judging the more dangerous runner according to the situation. Thanks to this, KIA won three games in a close game within three points in five out of six games.
It's confidence for a reason. Park Chan-ho has never been pushed out of the shortstop category since the KBO defensive award was created in 2023. In the first year, he was a joint winner with Oh Ji-hwan of the LG Twins, and last year was the sole winner. Last year, he had his first golden glove in his career by performing outstanding performances in offense and defense, including hitting .300 for two consecutive years as a shortstop.
Park Chan-ho will appear in the FA market after the end of this season. Of course, shortstop's value of 30 percent is expected to be high. Shim Woo-joon, who is behind Park Chan-ho in his career performance, also signed a four-year, 5 billion won contract with the Hanwha Eagles ahead of this season. Of course, Park Chan-ho has no choice but to expect more than Shim Woo-joon.
KIA's main players will qualify as FA after this season. There are seven players, including Park Chan-ho, Yang Hyun-jong, Choi Hyung-woo, Jo Sang-woo, Choi Won-joon, Lee Joon-young, and Han Seung-taek. Choi Won-joon and Han Seung-taek are struggling, but the rest are still key powers. In particular, Park Chan-ho is judged to be irreplaceable internally. KIA has made the best defense to increase the amount of compensation by raising Park Chan-ho's annual salary to 450 million won this year.
Another attraction I found with Park Chan-ho this year is leadership. Park Chan-ho became the second temporary captain as interim captain Kim Sun-bin left due to injury following captain Na Sung-bum, and it is said that he is leading the team's atmosphere better than expected.
Center fielder Kim Ho-ryeong "The atmosphere is really good. Young friends are doing well now, so the atmosphere is definitely better. Now (Park) Chan-ho is a temporary captain and leads the children well,' he testified.
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Lee is playing well as a captain. Even when trying to take out the game, (Park) Chan-ho said 'You can run more'. I think that's the influence that Park Chan-ho has on the team. If you try to arrange your physical strength because you are a shortstop, you tend to work harder if you are considerate."
Park Chan-ho said "I can feel the coach being very considerate. Whenever there is a break, he always tries to take it out first. That's how I feel, so I'm always playing responsibly."
If there is one thing I personally regret, it has become difficult to achieve a batting average of .300 for three consecutive years. He has a batting average of 0.286 (84 hits in 294 at-bats) in 76 games. Starting in June, activation began to take place late.
Park Chan-ho said, `I honestly don't think it's going to be easy to do 30%. It's a time when you have to keep going back and forth for 30% by now. It's not easy because it's far from 30% right now."
Right now, I'm only thinking about the team rising to the top. KIA had 45 wins, 37 losses and 3 draws in the season before the game on the 8th, 0.5 games behind the LG Twins and Lotte Giants, who are tied for second place. It is four games apart from the leading Hanwha Eagles. KIA planned to raise its ranking as much as possible and enter the All-Star break with Hanwha in the last three consecutive games in the first half.
Park Chan-ho said, `If the team gets better in the second half of the year, it gets better, but I don't think there will be anything bad. It's not that far apart (from top teams). I think it will be enough. We're almost there," he said emphatically.
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This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
