Among the 10 professional baseball teams, Samsung Lions is the only team with little change in power in preparation for the 2022 season.
The other 9 clubs recruited external free agents or reinforced foreign players, but Samsung was the only one that did not recruit external free agents or replace foreign players. Rather, it is reasonable to assume that infielder Kim Sang-soo, an internal free agent, moved to kt Wiz, and Oh Seon-jin moved to Hanwha Eagles, resulting in a net loss of power.
The only thing that has changed is that Park Jin-man, who took over as acting manager after manager Heo Sam-young resigned last year, signed a contract as an official manager for 3 years and up to 1.2 billion won.
Instead, there are places where Samsung has invested. This is the best treatment for foreign players.
A $600,000 increase to $1.7 million with Jose Pirella in the third year, $1.6 million with a $100,000 cut with fourth year ace David Buchanan, and a $300,000 increase with Albert Suarez in the second year. He signed a contract for a total of 1.3 million dollars안전놀이터.
All three foreign players far exceeded 1 million dollars, and the total is 4.6 million dollars, which is by far the first place. That’s $1 million more than Lotte Giants’ $3.55 million. Pirella is the number one salary among all foreign hitters, and even in terms of all foreign players, he is the king of most wins in the 2022 season, second only to $1.8 million of Casey Kelly (LG Twins), who is in his fifth year this year.
Perhaps because of this, Samsung is considered to be at the bottom of the list this year. In preparation for the 2023 season, Chae Eun-seong (9 billion won), Lee Tae-tae (2.5 billion won), and Oh Seon-jin (400 million won) were recruited to reinforce their strength, but they are two weak points along with the Hanwha Eagles, who have not escaped the evaluation of being in the lower ranks.
Among the 10 clubs so far, Samsung is the only team that has not finished in last place.
For five seasons from 2016 to 2020, which can be said to be Samsung’s dark period, it has always reigned as a strong team, to the extent that it is not easy to find results below 6th place, except when it is in the lower ranks with 9-9-6-8-8. The championship is 8 times, the second following the KIA Tigers’ 11 times (including 9 Haitai Tigers), but in fact, it is rather ahead of the KIA in terms of the number of years in fall baseball.
Samsung tied with kt wiz in the regular league in 2021 with 76 wins, 59 losses and 9 draws (win rate 0.563), then lost in the tiebreaker and advanced to the playoffs in second place, including 30 fall baseballs in 41 seasons until last year. went out to From the 1997 to 2008 season, he also set a new KBO league record for advancing to fall baseball for 12 consecutive seasons.
Unlike this, the KIA entered the fall baseball 23 times, and the Doosan Bears, who won the first year of the pro and entered the Korean Series for 7 consecutive years, were 24 times.
In terms of last place record, Doosan had the experience of falling to the bottom three times in 1990, when there were 7 teams, and 1991 and 1997, when there were 8 teams. After finishing last in the league, it fell to the bottom four times in 2005 and 2007 to 8th place. LG also posted its name at the bottom twice.
In contrast, the teams that experienced the bottom the most were Lotte Giants and Hanwha Eagles 9 times side by side.
In the middle of last year’s season, Samsung had to give up its dream of fall baseball for two consecutive years as the team lost 13 consecutive losses, the most in the team’s history (previous 11 consecutive losses). If they fall to the bottom as the experts’ observatory this year, the Samsung Lions will record another dark history.
On the contrary, if you overturn the evaluation of those around you and continue to advance to the 31st fall baseball, you may sound an alarm in the existing FA market that is overheating. This is why I am particularly interested in Samsung’s move this season.