Doosan defeated Kiwoom and won 4 consecutive wins for the first time since Lee Seung-yeop took office.
The Doosan Bears,먹튀검증 led by coach Lee Seung-yeop, won 4-1 with 11 hits, including two homers, in an away game against Kiwoom Heroes in the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League held at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on the 16th. Doosan, who won 3 consecutive victories against the KIA Tigers last weekend at home, moved to Gocheok and defeated Kiwoom in the first game of the week, maintaining the 4th place NC Dinos by half a game and maintaining the 5th place (18 wins, 1 draw). 16 losses).
For Doosan, Yang Seok-hwan, who hit the preemptive two-run home run (No. 7) from Kiwoom starter Choi Won-tae in the 4th inning, became the main character of the final stroke, and Yang Eui-ji, who hit a wedge solo shot (No. 4) in the 8th inning, recorded multiple hits including a home run in 3 consecutive games. . On the mound, four pitchers neatly blocked Kiwoom’s lineup with one run, and the starting pitcher’s counterattack stood out. Choi Won-joon, starting sidearm of Doosan, who finally won the season’s beast girl after 7 games this season, is the main character.
‘Yun Seok-Min Award’ winners who fought hard but were unlucky
Of course, there is a virtual award that baseball fans are interested in every year, although no awards ceremony is held after the season. This is the ‘Yun Seok-min Award’ given to an unlucky pitcher who pitched as a starter and pitched well, but suffered more losses than wins due to silence on the other line or arson of the bullpen. In 2007, KIA’s Seok-min Yoon recorded a respectable ERA of 3.78, including 14 quality starts in 28 games, and recorded 7 wins and 18 losses, becoming the first recipient of the ‘Seok-Min Yoon Award’.
One of the most unlucky pitchers of all time was Ryu Hyun-jin (Toronto Blue Jays), a ‘Korean Monster’ during his time with the Hanwha Eagles. In 2012, his last season in Korea, Ryu Hyun-jin threw 182.2 innings, the third most in the league, ranked first in strikeouts (210) and recorded 22 quality starts in 27 games. However, Ryu Hyun-jin, who won double digits for 6 consecutive years from his rookie season to 2011, only won 9 wins in his last year before advancing to the major leagues.
In 2017, even after winning the ERA title, a pitcher with more losses than wins was born. It was a left-handed Ryan Peer Band who played an active part in KT Wiz. Peerband, who recorded 13 wins at Nexen Heroes (currently Kiwoom) in 2015, moved to kt in 2016 and succeeded in renewing the contract, throwing 160 innings in 26 games in 2017, recording the lowest ERA in the league. However, at that time, kt could not provide enough scoring support to peer band, and peer band ended the season with 8 wins and 10 losses.
Brooks Reilly, who is playing for the Major League New York Mets this year, is also a former 2019 Yoon Seok-min Award winner. Rayleigh, who has been active as Lotte’s left-handed ace since 2015 and has shown steady performance, appeared in 30 games in 2019 and recorded a respectable ERA of 3.88 in 181 innings. However, the report card that Rayleigh received that year was the disgraceful title of ‘the pitcher with the most losses (14 losses) in the league’, and Rayleigh left the KBO league, which he had been active for five years at the end of 2019.
The winner of the 2022 Yoon Seok-min Award was Samsung Lions’ foreign pitcher Albert Suarez. Suarez, who was expected to play an active role as Samsung’s one-two punch with David Buchanan while signing a total of $1 million with Samsung, recorded an average ERA of 2.49, which is fourth in the league, with 19 quality starts in 30 games in 2022. However, Suarez was only 6-8 and did not produce good results compared to the contents of pitching.
Leader of Doosan’s starting lineup filled with rookies
Choi Won-joon, a college graduate sidearm who received Doosan’s first pick in 2017, attracted a lot of attention at the time of joining compared to Woo-seok Ko (LG Twins), a promising fastball at Chungam High School, and Jung-hoo Lee (Kiwoom), the ‘Grandson of the Wind’. Did not receive. Choi Won-joon, who underwent elbow surgery before joining Doosan, underwent surgery when thyroid cancer was also discovered. However, Choi Won-joon overcame an elbow injury and thyroid cancer with strong mental strength, returned to the mound, and grew into a key pitcher for Doosan.
Choi Won-joon, who played an active role as a bullpen pitcher in 2019 and contributed to Doosan’s Korean Series championship, transformed into a starting pitcher from 2020 and showed good performance, recording double-digit multipliers and an average ERA of 3 points for two consecutive years. In particular, in 2021, he will be selected for the Tokyo Olympic team and recognized as a submarine starting pitcher representing the league along with Ko Young-pyo (kt). However, Choi Won-jun recorded a good ERA of 3.60 in 30 games in 2022, and tied for first place in the league with 8 wins and 13 losses.
And Choi Won-joon’s bad luck that started in 2022 seemed to continue until this year. Choi Won-jun recorded 4 quality starts in 6 appearances after the start of this season, but recorded 3 losses without a win. In fact, Choi Won-joon’s scoring support per game this season was only 1.25 points, the lowest among league starters. However, while starting pitchers such as Kwak Bin and Dylan Pyle left due to injuries, Choi Won-joon continued to keep the mound and finally bore fruit in his 7th appearance of the season.
Choi Won-joon started against Kiwoom on the 16th and threw 97 balls in 6 innings, giving up 5 hits, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts and 1 run, winning his first win of the season in the 7th game. Choi Won-joon did not receive very active scoring support that day, but the Doosan line-up scored 4 runs with Yang Seok-hwan and Yang Eui-ji’s home runs, and the three bullpen pitchers who were put in from the 7th inning also blocked the Kiwoom line-up with 1 hit and no run in 3 innings. Choi Won-joon also received help from Su-bin Jeong in the crisis with 2 fourth bases in the 6th inning.
This year, due to Gwak Bin’s back injury and Dylan’s elbow injury, young pitchers such as Kim Dong-ju and Choi Seung-yong are active in the starting lineup. In Doosan, where there are not enough veteran players in the starting lineup, Choi Won-jun, who is in his 4th year as a full-time starter, is very precious. Attention is focusing on whether Choi Won-joon, who struggled harder than anyone else to win his first win of the season, will be able to start accumulating victories in earnest with momentum.