It is clear that this year was a slightly different upward trend. However, if the current trend continues, they are likely to lose all of the win-loss margin they earned at the beginning of the season. It is the Lotte Giants, closer to 5th place than 3rd place.메이저사이트
Lotte finished April this year with a 14-8 win rate of 0.636 and ‘single 1st place’. Taking advantage of the gap where attention was focused on SSG Landers and LG Twins’ ‘competition for the lead’ throughout April, Lotte began to ride a winning streak and started the season in first place. Of course, I couldn’t be satisfied with the results in April. Lotte finished second in April last season, but that’s why it has been on a steep decline since May.
But this year was a little different. The good flow of April continued into May. Although the ranking fell from 1st to 3rd, Lotte showed a slightly different move from the 2022 season with a 13-9 win rate of 0.591 (3rd place) in May. Last year, Lotte’s performance began to plummet as Corona 19 confirmed patients appeared one after another in May and Han Dong-hee, who won the monthly MVP in April, was injured and suffered a sluggish performance.
The biggest reason Lotte was able to rise at the beginning of the season was the high batting average in scoring chances and the solid pitching of bullpen pitchers. There were not enough hitters to show off a ‘one shot’ that could reverse the atmosphere, but when a chance was created, everyone showed off their ‘solver’ instinct. And the bullpen pitchers showed 100% of their skills on the mound regardless of their ‘role’.
In April and May, Lotte created a huge sensation, and the KBO League was a box office success despite various incidents, including being eliminated from the group stage three times in a row by the WBC. But was it just that the timing of the crash was different from last year? Lotte is coming down on a slide in June. After suffering a shock loss to KT Wiz in three consecutive matches last week, he bowed his head by recording a losing series against Samsung Lions and Hanwha Eagles.
Lotte’s sudden fall is not one or two reasons. Jack Rex, who was called ‘a foreigner of fortune’, is suffering from severe batting after returning from a knee injury, and ‘one-two punch’ Dan Straley and Charlie Barnes, who were unable to pay for their meals in April and revived in May, are struggling together. the biggest Considering the salaries they receive, their performances are clearly not living up to expectations.
Of course, it’s not just a foreigner’s problem. It is undeniable that Kim Jin-wook and Kim Sang-soo, who served as Lotte’s reliable “waist” in April and May, were excluded from the first team due to physical problems, and that Lotte drew a downward trend from the point when the number of injured players, including Ahn Kwon-soo, increased noticeably. an impossible fact. This shows that the depth is not yet thick.
Starting with the confrontation with SSG Landers, the downtrend was obviously fatal in the midst of a tight schedule of 9 consecutive matches with KT Wiz and LG Twins in the metropolitan area. And this flow continued to face-to-face with SSG. Lotte lost 12-1 on the 16th with a whopping 5 home runs. It was a complete defeat with no excuses. In addition, on the 17th, with a 5-1 lead, the Pil Seung-jo team leading to Kim Jin-wook, Koo Seung-min, and Kim Won-joong all collapsed, and he knelt down with a whopping 7 points in the bottom of the 8th inning. In the end, the ‘Losing Series’ was recently confirmed for four consecutive series.
It’s a total mess. On the 17th, ‘Glasses Ace’ Park Se-woong blocked 7 innings with 1 run and recorded a quality start + (3 ERA or less in 7 innings). . Among Lotte’s starting lineup in April, only Na Gyun-an did his part. Other starting pitchers have never recorded a quality start (less than 3 earned runs in 6 innings).
Lotte’s April starting pitchers’ ability to digest innings was the lowest among 10 clubs, and the burden of innings that the starting pitchers could not digest was naturally borne by the bullpen pitchers. And as the number of games where the winning team is used even in losing games increases, the pitch of the bullpen is declining.
Also, if you look only at the recent game, it seems to be reminiscent of last April. The starting lineup, including Straley and Barnes, is collapsing one after another. Looking back at the games on the 13th and 16th, no starting pitcher threw more than 5 innings. There are bound to be many games where the weight is already tilted.
Lotte finished April in 1st place and May in 3rd place, forming a ‘three-strong’ composition with SSG and LG. However, due to the rapid fall, it was closer to the 5th place Doosan Bears than the gap with the 3rd place NC Dinos. It is recording a win rate of over 50%, but this is the reason why we cannot be vigilant. What will be the fate of Lotte, which has never stepped on the fall stage since 2017? If the current trend continues, Lotte may not be able to achieve the desired results.