“I didn’t have a goal, but now I have one.”
“I didn’t have a goal, but now I have one.”
Son Ho-young, 30, an infielder for the Lotte Giants of the Korean Baseball Organization, has blossomed since being traded from LG. Son, who arrived in a Lotte uniform on March 30 in a one-for-one trade for 150-kilometer-throwing submariner Woo Kang-hoon, has become an indispensable infielder for Lotte.
Every game from now on, all of his records are career-highs. In 29 games, he is batting .322 (32-for-100) with three home runs, 18 RBIs, six doubles, and an OPS of .862. A third-round pick in the second round of the 2020 Rookie Draft, Son is in his fifth year in the organization and has become more than just a backup.
His batting average in scoring position of 3-for-8 (12-for-31) is the highest on the team among players with at least 20 at-bats in scoring position. His WPA (Wins Probability Added), 안전놀이터 as measured by the KBO’s official statistical organization, Sports2eye, is 1.01. This is the highest in the team. This shows the purity of Son’s performance.
WPA is a statistical measure of how much a player increases a team’s chances of winning.
Since both teams start with a 50 percent chance of winning at the time of the playoffs, a WPA of 0.5 can be interpreted as one win. In other words, Son has been single-handedly responsible for two of Lotte’s 10 wins since the trade.Unlike in LG, Son has a simple goal as he plays every game. After hitting a come-from-behind three-run homer and the game-winning triple against Sajik Kiwoom on Feb. 2. “I didn’t have a goal before, but now I have one. I want to play in all of the team’s remaining games,” he said, adding, ”I don’t have a score in my head. I haven’t played full-time yet, so I don’t think I can envision something like that, I just want to play in all the remaining games and do well,” she said encouragingly.
In order to achieve these goals, Son needs to be healthy. However, Son has been far from ‘healthy’ in the past. It’s not that he didn’t have his chances at LG, but injuries hampered him every time he tried to take advantage of them. His LG teammates used to call him “soap bubble,” “glass body,” and other unflattering terms.
He dreamed of becoming an ‘iron man’.
However, the risk of injury still lurks. After batting in the second inning against Samsung Electronics in Daegu on March 2, he felt discomfort in his right hamstring and was substituted. It wasn’t complete pain, just tightness, but he was replaced early to protect him given his injury history. For Son, he was playing at a level of intensity he hadn’t experienced before. It’s time to manage his playing time.
For now, Son’s departure is a huge blow to Lotte. They don’t have the players to handle it. For now, veteran Jeong Hoon temporarily filled in at third base in Game 3 and did a decent job, but the team needs to hope that its secondary options, including Noh Jin-hyuk and Han Dong-hee, 바카라사이트 추천 who can play third base, can get back on track quickly. That will give Son some breathing room.
Lotte now needs to figure out how to get the best out of Son. They realize that if he wants to continue his current form, he needs to manage his injuries and fitness.