Why didn't Cho Sung-hwan receive the final choice when he said he was confirmed as the next manager of Doosan
Oct 20, 2025
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The Doosan Bears, who finished the regular season in ninth place, announced their new head coach on the 20th after much consideration. In fact, the worries about the next coach, which continued throughout the second half of the season, continued for about three weeks even after all the regular season games were completed.
It was also revealed that Doosan conducted in-depth interviews with leading candidates, and that the candidate was a former leader, including acting coach Cho Sung-hwan and former SSG Landers coach Kim Won-hyung.
And finally, the announcement was made on the 20th. Doosan confirmed the appointment of Kim Won-hyung as the 12th manager. The contract is worth up to 2 billion won per year (down payment of 500 million won and annual salary of 500 million won).
Manager Kim Won-hyung also has a relationship with Doosan. He served as the first-team pitching coach at Doosan in the 2019-2020 season when Kim Tae-hyung was in office, and also won the Korean Series in the 2019 season. After the 2020 season, he left the team when he was appointed as the new head coach of SSG Landers.
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Acting head coach Cho Sung-hwan has been leading the game until the end of the regular season as acting head coach of the first team since early June, when former head coach Lee Seung-yeop voluntarily resigned. Although he is an acting coach, 86 games were played because the former coach stepped down at the beginning of the season. He took the helm as an agent while the team's atmosphere was subdued as it fell to the bottom in the beginning, and recorded a winning rate of 0.458 with 38 wins, 3 draws and 45 losses in 86 games. During this period, he was seventh out of 10 clubs. After moving away from the ranking battle, Doosan actively hired promising players in their 20s and ran the game looking at next year early.
In fact, acting coach Cho Sung-hwan has been selected as a candidate for the next head coach since his coaching days. He also received high marks for his leadership as a player, and spent a long time at Doosan after starting his career as a field leader in the 2018 season. After spending the 2020-2022 season with Hanwha Eagles, he returned to Doosan and has held major positions as a defensive coach and QC coach. It meant that he knew Doosan's players better than anyone else and that he would be able to become a candidate when the head coach position became vacant in the future due to the evaluation of providing customized guidance.
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However, Doosan's choice was Kim Won-hyung, not Cho Sung-hwan. Doosan's last-minute performance may have been affected by young players' physical strength and poor performance in the second half, but above all, Doosan seems to have had a great internal thirst for 'pitched power'. In the end, in order to build a stable team that steadily advances to the postseason again, it is necessary to rebuild the mound, which means that former manager Kim Won-hyung, a former pitching expert, was more suitable to play the role.
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It is believed that the club also sympathized with this part. Of course, in the case of acting coach Cho Sung-hwan, he has been a coach for the first team for a long time and has already experienced as a head of the first team as an acting coach, which is different from his previous coach. However, if you sign a contract, it is inevitable to become a first-team coach. On the other hand, head coach Kim Won-hyung experienced winning the 2022 regular season, the Korean Series, in his second year at SSG, and he has already spent three seasons as a coach, so it seems that this part can act as a force to stabilize Doosan right away.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.