The regular season winner KIA Tigers announced the training list for the Korean Series.
KIA started training to prepare for the 2024 Shinhan SOL Bank KBO League Korean Series at its home ground of Gwangju-Kia Champions Field from Friday. A total of 54 players, including 19 coaching staff including coach Lee Bum-ho, 16 pitchers, three catchers, nine infielders and seven outfielders, participated in the training on the day.
Kia's team warmed up by light warm-up before the training and finished its first day of training by conducting team defense and batting training. Ahead of the first game of the Korean Series on Oct. 21, Kia plans to boost its sense of play through two practice games (Sept. 9 and 14) and one practice game (Sept. 16) by itself.
While key pitching players such as Yang Hyun-jong and Kim Do-young are included in the list without any major unexpected changes, it is the news of the exclusion of Hong Jong-pyo (24) and Kim Ho-ryeong (32). Infielder Hong Jong-pyo (100 games) and outfielder Kim Ho-ryeong (64 games) performed well as resources for the main defense of the regular season, but failed to make the training list compared to the Korean Series.
In this season, Hong recorded a batting average of 0.295 (31 hits in 105 at-bats) with 11 RBIs and an OPS of 0.729, while Kim Ho-ryeong recorded a batting average of 0.136 (8 hits in 59 at-bats) with one homer, four RBIs and an OPS of 0.459. Kim Ho-ryeong has suffered ups and downs throughout the season, and Hong also had a sluggish batting average of 0.250.
However, it is a different story when it comes to defense. Kia has posted 146 mistakes in 144 games during the regular season this season, which is regrettable. It has surpassed the largest number of team errors (134) recorded by the Hanwha Eagles in a single season in 2022. Both the team's batting average (0.301) and the average earned run average (4.40) are the only concerns of Kia, which ranked No. 1 in the league.
Yoon Do-hyun and Park Jung-woo are expected to fill the gap between the two players. Yoon Do-hyun, an infield multi-resource player, played in six games for 10 days from Sept. 21 and left a strong impression with a batting average of 0.407 (11 hits in 27 times at bat) and one homer, eight RBIs and an OPS of 1.000. Outfielder Park Jung-woo, who was the stealer king (32) of the Futures League last year, also showed impressions with a batting average of 0.308 (20 hits in 65 times at bat) and an OPS of 0.733 in 66 games. 메이저사이트
Of the 35 players on the training list, at least five will not be allowed on the 30-member roster of the Korean Series. Attention is focusing on Kia's choice, which aims at its 12th career championship.