One of the points to watch in the new season of professional baseball LG is the composition of the center batting line. LG, whose lineup was centered on the left-hander line, maintained an appropriate level of left-right balance by placing right-hander Chae Eun-seong in the fourth spot until last year.
In the new season, it is inevitable to find a new 4th hitter. We need a new face to fill the vacancy of Chae Eun-seong, who left for Hanwha in the free agent market last winter.
LG coach Yeom Kyung-yeop is considering right-handed hitter Austin Dean and left-handed hitter Kim Hyeon-soo as candidates for the new fourth hitter. Until last year, Kim Hyun-soo, who mainly played as the 3rd hitter, maintained the batting order, and decided to look at the future flow and decide on the two options of putting Dean in the 4th position or pulling Dean to 3 and putting Kim Hyun-soo as the 4th hitter. Director Yeom said, “I will materialize numbers 3 and 4 while spending spring camp and playing in real battles. After that, depending on the condition, you can move the order of the 3rd and 4th of the two,” he said. 슬롯사이트
Kim Hyun-soo is a player who has been verified a hundred times. It is impossible to predict the pace of Kim Hyun-soo this season, but he is a hitter who can roughly calculate how far the season will go. However, it is not yet easy to predict Dean’s performance in the first season of the KBO League in detail. This is because foreign batters show a large variance depending on their ability to adapt. Over the past year, LG foreign hitters did just that. Accordingly, manager Yeom’s 3rd and 4th batting order is also a different order depending on Dean’s ability to adapt to the league. If Dean achieves a certain level of performance, it is expected that the 3rd and 4th batting order of the two will be arranged according to the quantified batting characteristics.
A player with slightly higher accuracy and on-base percentage is more likely to land in the number three spot. As of last year, Kim Hyun-soo participated in 141 games and recorded a batting average of 0.286, an on-base percentage of 0.375 and an OPS of 0.848. He had 23 home runs on the season. Dean played in 115 games for the San Francisco Giants Triple-A last year, posting a batting average of 0.268, an on-base percentage of 0.345, and an OPS of 0.812. He had 17 home runs in the Triple-A season. Again, the variables are the various numbers that Dean will raise while playing in the KBO league.
If Dean maintains the number 4 for the past 2 years and shows as much batting power as Eun-seong, he will be able to meet the expected value of the bench. Chae Eun-seong recorded a batting average of 0.287, an on-base percentage of 0.356, and an OPS of 0.800 over the past two years. It was similar to Dean’s triple-A record last year.
Is LG’s 3rd and 4th batting order in the 2023 season a ‘KD line’ that leads to Kim Hyun-soo and Dean? Or is it the ‘DK line’? It is important for Dean to play his role even in one of the two batting order. This is because the entire lineup can harmonize only when one right-handed hitter stands on the center line. LG’s numbers 3 and 4 are becoming a kind of ‘first button’ that solidifies the entire lineup.