The Lotte Giants, who entered May at the forefront, but there are also clear concerns. That’s the selection team.
Lotte has a record of 15 wins and 9 losses (0.625) in 24 games since the opening of the season. There are only 6 wins in the starting lineup. In more than half of the games, relief pitchers won.
Along with Hanwha Eagles and Samsung Lions, it is the team with the fewest starting wins in the entire league. Compared to the two teams, it is an unsatisfactory figure even considering that there are many games that Lotte could not play due to rain.
Of the 6 starting wins, more than half of the 4 wins belonged to Na Kyun-an. Na Kyun-an pitched in 5 games for a month in April and accumulated multipliers step by step with 4 wins and an average ERA of 1.34 in 33⅔innings. Even against the NC Dinos on the 21st, where he was the only winning pitcher, he laid the foundation for the team’s victory with a good pitching of 2 runs in 7 innings.스포츠토토
Na Kyun-an was sluggish with 5 hits (1 home run), 2 walks, 4 strikeouts and 5 runs in 4 innings against the KIA Tigers on the 3rd, his most recent appearance, but he is the ‘leading player’ who brought the team to 2nd place no matter what anyone says.
While Na Kyun-an was struggling, the rest of the pitchers had only two starting wins. Charlie Barnes and Han Hyun-hee each won one game, and Dan Strayley and Park Se-woong have yet to become winning pitchers. It seems that the pitchers who have to play the role of ‘ace’ are continuing their sluggishness at the beginning of the season.
Strayley is recording an average ERA of 5.82 after the start of this season with 2 losses in 21⅔ innings in 5 games. He has fallen short of expectations as he has failed to fill five innings in his last three consecutive games and surrendered the mound to the bullpen.
However, as he took a break for nearly two weeks after the match against the Hanwha Eagles on the 26th, Lotte believes in the rebound of Strayley, who was announced as a starting pitcher against the Doosan Bears on the 9th.
The situation for Barnes, who played 186⅓ innings last year, is also not good. His performance this season was 1 win 1 loss with an ERA of 7.58 in 19 innings, and he never threw more than 6 innings. Only when Barnes fulfills his duties as an inning eater can the bullpen relieve some of the burden.
Park Se-woong, who signed a non-FA multi-year contract for a total of 9 billion won for 5 years after the end of the 2022 season, also has a heavy shoulder. He recorded an average ERA of 5.25 in 24 innings and 1 loss in 5 games this season, and he has not been able to win and win. In the match against KIA on the 2nd, the previous appearance, he gave up 6 pitches and was sluggish with 3 runs in 4⅔innings.
All team members, not just coach Larry Sutton, want the starting lineup to rebound. The role of pitchers is important in order not to repeat the nightmare as the ranking has dropped drastically since May after starting at the top a year ago.