It is a failure of management and a failure of list selection.
The Korean baseball team will play a match against the Chinese baseball team in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) Group B, Round 4, at 7:00 pm on the 13th at Tokyo Dome, Japan.
For our national team, the match against China could be a meaningless game. This is because Australia wins the match against the Czech Republic, which will be held prior to the match against China, or if the Czech Republic fails to meet the conditions, elimination is confirmed. We have entrusted our lives to other teams.
Our national team was tied with Japan, China, Australia and the Czech Republic at this WBC. Except for Japan having an advantage over us, it was said that we were superior to the rest of the teams. In fact, it was. It was thought that it would be easy as it was possible to advance to the quarterfinals by finishing second in the group.
However, our national team was defeated 7-8 by an Australian national team full of American minor league single-A and Australian leaguers. In addition, they barely escaped a call to Japan, losing 4-13, and even though they beat the Czech Republic 7-3, they are on the verge of elimination.
There are many reasons why our elimination was likely, but the collapse of the mound was great. He showed a miserable appearance, conceding a total of 24 points in 3 games.
The collapse of the mound is due to the pitcher bias. Our national team brought 15 pitchers to this tournament. Seven of them are disappointing.
Ko Woo-seok, Jung Woo-young, Yang Hyeon-jong,안전놀이터 Koo Chang-mo, Sohn Joon So, Kim Yun-sik, and Lee Eui-ri combined for only 1⅔ innings. There are various reasons such as injury, sluggishness, and hunting, but he could only digest 1⅔ innings. With 7 players, our national team played 9 innings against Australia, 8 innings against Japan, and 9 innings against Czech Republic, totaling 26 innings. 7 out of 15 is close to half, but we only took 1⅔ of the 26 defensive innings we digested.
As a result, the weight is being placed on the remaining Park Se-woong, Ko Young-pyo, Kim Gwang-hyeon, Won Tae-in, Kwak Bin, Lee Yong-chan, Jeong Cheol-won, and Kim Won-joong. Cheol-Won Jeong and Won-Joong Kim are making 3 consecutive appearances, which is not good for a pitcher. Won Tae-in, who was selected as the starting pitcher for the match against China, has already thrown 55 pitches in two days, but takes a day off before going back to the mound. In addition to the final match, these players were also the players who appeared a lot in the evaluation match against Orix and Hanshin. As a result, pitching power is weak, and in general, it is not possible to gain an advantage in the fight against opponent hitters.
It is a failure of pitcher management by manager Lee Kang-cheol and coaching staff. In addition, the technical committee failed to select players. Expecting an easy quarterfinal, there was definitely a reason why I had only a tiny bit of hope.