The past four years have been a chaotic time for the Lotte Giants. What remained of Lotte during this period was a ranking of ‘7887’. Lotte ultimately failed to achieve results. Director Seong Min-gyu, who had hoped to bring about reform, has now stepped down.스포츠토토

Lotte appointed new coach Kim Tae-hyung on the 20th. The terms of the three-year contract are a total of 2.4 billion won (down payment of 600 million won, annual salary of 600 million won). The famous player who advanced to the Korean Series for 7 consecutive years and won the Korean Series 3 times came to Busan. Lotte began to change by abandoning the policy of appointing a novice coach and bringing in a coach with championship experience.

And Lotte added in the press release on the manager’s appointment, “The next general manager is in the process of being selected.” It meant the dismissal of general manager Seong Min-gyu. As a former scout for the Chicago Cubs in the Major League, he hoped to introduce advanced baseball to Lotte. In fact, Director Seong Min-gyu implemented the ‘Same Reform’ upon his appointment. He drastically organized the team and introduced equipment to establish data baseball.

A new wind of change has blown through Lotte. Of course, it was a stepping stone that expected long-term results rather than short-term results. In the rookie draft, a large number of talented players were selected with ‘athletic ability’ as the keynote. Although he stayed in the bottom tier and got a good number in the draft, he developed a development strategy based on his own standards. Dong-hee Yoon, Min-seok Kim, Seong-bin Son, and Seung-yeop Na are resources expected to be the future of Lotte.

Nevertheless, Director Seong Min-gyu’s system ultimately failed to produce results. The trade strategy failed, resulting in the depth becoming thinner. We attempted to strengthen our power in many ways, but this backfired. Ji-wan Ji and Kang-jun Lee (now Kiwoom), who were acquired through trade, were not at their best. Above all, Shin Bon-ki, Oh Yun-seok, Kim Jun-tae, and Lee Ho-yeon (KT), who were ‘depth’ players sent out by Lotte, returned as boomerangs. Lotte’s direction was bound to be shaken.

There was no proper season for foreign players either. And the response to this was not agile. There were successful foreign players such as Dan Straily, Charlie Barnes, Aaron Wilkerson, Dixon Machado, and Jack Rex, but they were only half successful. Over the past four years, there has not been a season with a perfect foreign player lineup. 

Above all, under the leadership of Seong Min-gyu, dissatisfaction and discord on the field increased. There was a conflict with coach Heo Moon-hoe, the first coach he took on as general manager, for over a year over the use of players and the way the team was managed. Ultimately, coach Heo Moon-hoe was fired midway through the 2021 season. 

And manager Larry Sutton was appointed as the captain to play baseball led by general manager Seong Min-gyu, but even this ended in failure. Baseball led by the general manager rather than on the field failed, and naturally, dissatisfaction on the field increased. There were many times of conflict and discord, and the dissonance continued.

There was a wave of new change, but the wave turned into a wave and hit Lotte. Although the goal was to foster education, the goal was not fully achieved. Ahead of this season, they recruited three free agent players, including Yoo Kang-nam, Noh Jin-hyuk, and Han Hyun-hee, and invested a total of 17 billion won, but tasted the bitter taste of failure in the first year of investment.

Lotte has been swept away by the waves over the past four years. Although there is room for reevaluation in the future, Lotte over the past four years will inevitably be evaluated as having wandered and failed to produce results. 

With the appointment of ‘winning coach’ Kim Tae-hyung, Lotte is expected to return to field-led baseball rather than general manager-led. And we took on the task of finding a new director who would reset the direction that had been shaken over the past four years and create harmony, not conflict, with the field.