I'm going to catch Hanwha, right? Lotte, the No. 1 team batting average, is the No. 1 player to change...The master's concerns in 41 sacrificial buns
Jul 16, 2025
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Before the season, not many baseball officials predicted Lotte's fall baseball. It was also painful to point out that there was no clear reinforcement of power, such as recruiting FA, and that the existing team's depth was thin. Regardless of the starting, bullpen, infield and outfield, there were many regrets about the team's power.
However, after the first half of the year, Lotte is proudly ranked third after Hanwha and LG. There is a fierce competition for the ranking, which is only one-and-a-half games apart from the fourth-place KIA and four-and-a-half games apart from the eighth-place Samsung, but Lotte has firmly maintained the top three without losing three consecutive games throughout the season.
Lotte's potential is also in the solid lineup. He ranked first in the team batting average (280) and fourth in the team OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage, 0.743). Lucky Jeon Min-jae's offense and defense performance was remarkable, and Reyes and Jeon Jun-woo played the first half without injury and burst one shot at each clutch.
Hwang Sung-bin and Na Seung-yeop are back, while Yoon Dong-hee, Ko Seung-min, and Son Ho-young are also set to return. Even 'Gum', which filled the gap where main hitters such as Jang Doo-sung, Kim Dong-hyuk, Han Tae-yang, Lee Ho-joon and Park Chan-hyung left due to injuries, do not intend to easily give up the first team position.
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It's a double play. Lotte tied for fourth in this category along with Doosan and NC with 100 double plays last year. No. 1 KIA had 119 and No. 2 KT had 112.
However, this year, Lotte recorded 87 double plays in the first half alone, ranking first in this category by far. The difference between Samsung-Kium-KT, which is tied for second place, is remarkable. The difference between the second and last SSG (50 pieces) is less than the difference between the first Lotte and the second place.
Reyes, who played in the foreground game, performed well in all directions of batting, including first in batting average (340), second in RBIs (69), first in most hits (122), and fifth in on-base plus slugging percentage) (0.887), but also ranked first in double play (15). Five Lotte players (Reyes, Son Ho-young nine, Jeon Jun-woo eight, Na Seung-yeop and Yoon Dong-hee seven) are included in the top 18 double play categories.
A double play is not just a matter determined by the speed of a batter or runner. The direction or speed of the batting, and the technique of not being double-jabbed by batters and runners may be more important. Compared to last year, the league's overall long balls have decreased, and Lotte hitters' ability to hit line drives rather than home runs may be the reason. It may be the result of Reyes and Jeon Jun-woo suffering from intensive analysis, or it may be the lack of skills of runners with little professional experience.
First of all, the field seems to focus on lack of experience. The view is that the players with little experience in the first division are the main players of the lineup, making it difficult to make an operation, and there were not many moves to predict the situation where a double play would occur.
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What stands out is that LG ranks first in this season's sacrifice bunt and is tied for second with Hanwha (44). However, unlike Kim Kyung-moon and Yeom Kyung-yeop, Kim Tae-hyung does not usually prefer sacrifice bunt.
Throughout the Doosan period, the number of team sacrifice bunt has never come up to the middle. This season is the season where the team's sacrifice bunt ranking is the highest, led by head coach Kim Tae-hyung.
If Lotte wants to overcome the ranking competition in the second half of the year and catch up with second-place LG or first-place Hanwha, it must solve the double play problem. As manager Kim Tae-hyung's double play decreases, Lotte is getting closer to autumn baseball and more.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
