It was overwhelming Ahn Hyun-min, 110 votes for the Rookie of the Year award, Kang Baek-ho → So Hyung-joon
Nov 24, 2025
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Ahn Hyun-min won the Rookie of the Year award at the '2025 Shinhan Bank SOL Bank KBO Awards' held at Lotte Hotel World Crystal Ballroom in Songpa-gu, Seoul on the 24th. Ahn Hyun-min won 110 out of 125 valid votes, winning 88 percent of the vote. Hanwha Jung Woo-joo received five votes, KIA Sung Young-tak and LG Song Seung-ki received three votes each, Samsung Bae Chan-seung received two votes, and LG Kim Young-woo and Lotte Jung Hyun-soo received one vote each.
It is the third rookie award in KT's history. In 2018, Kang Baek-ho (currently Hanwha Eagles) became the first rookie of the year in the club's history, and pitcher So Hyung-joon won the second honor in 2020. In five years, Ahn Hyun-min inherited the Rookie of the Year award.
It is a myth of success for middle and new people. Ahn Hyun-min graduated from Masan High School and joined KT in the 38th place in the fourth round of the second round of the 2022 Rookie Draft. He was a catcher at the time of joining the team, but changed his position to an outfielder to revive his batting talent. The club proposed and the player accepted.
Ahn Hyun-min, who solved the military problem early, first experienced the first team last year when he was in his third year as a professional. While serving in the military, I made myself look forward to power heaters by weight training. However, he only had 29 at-bats in 16 games in the first team, and finished the season with a batting average of 0.200 (5 hits in 25 at-bats), one home run and two RBIs.
Ahn Hyun-min started as a second-tier player again this year, but the hitting sense in the Futures League was unusual. He hit .426 (29 hits in 68 at-bats), had five home runs and 18 RBIs. KT manager Lee Kang-chul called Ahn Hyun-min the first team, and Ahn Hyun-min also showed off his strength by hitting large home runs against first-team pitchers.
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Coach Lee Kang-chul said Ahn Hyun-min was unstable in defense in the early stages of the first-team call-up, but he trusted the destructive bat and used it as a built-in, and at the end of the season, he improved his defense and became a key KT hitter. In two warm-up matches against the Japanese national team held this month, Ahn Hyun-min also fired home runs for two consecutive days, raising expectations for him to grow into a central hitter for the national team.
Ahn Hyun-min said "As everyone knows, while in the military, both my body and mind became adults, so I was able to achieve the same results as now.I want to say thank you (to KT fans) always. Thank you for loving me a lot, whether I'm good or not."
Song Seung-ki, a second-hand rookie left-hander of the LG Twins, was mentioned as Ahn Hyun-min's contender for the Rookie of the Year. Song Seung-ki graduated from Yatapo and joined LG in the 87th place in the second round of the rookie draft in 2021. He pitched only 9 ⅓ innings in addition to 7 games in 2022 and 1 game in 2023, qualifying for this year's Rookie of the Year.
Song Seung-ki joined the ranks of LG's 10-win pitchers this season along with Chirinos (13 wins), Son Joo-young (11 wins), and Lim Chan-kyu (11 wins). It was a great achievement in the first full-time year. He started 28 games with an 11-6, 144 innings, 125 strikeouts, and a 3.50 ERA. If the monster Ahn Hyun-min had not appeared, it would have been enough to receive the Rookie of the Year award, but it was behind Jung Woo-ju and remained tied for third place.
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This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
