The Hangzhou Asian Games baseball team is not yet complete. Even the already announced final entry is in a situation where it is virtually necessary to continue the ‘exploration’ right before the competition with many variables. While looking into the KBO league and replacing the final entry, he is simultaneously analyzing the opponent’s power.
The baseball team announced the list of 24 finalists on June 9th. The announcement was made about four months before the tournament, giving the players time to prepare physically and mentally. Instead, the number of cases where variables such as injuries occur was left open.
The worst of the ‘number of cases’ ever happened. Outfielder Lee Jung-hoo (Kiwoom), one of the core players, was injured in July and ended the season and left the national team. Starting pitching resource Koo Chang-mo (NC), who is recovering from an injury, has yet to return to the mound. Some players, such as Park Se-woong (Lotte) and Jung Woo-young (LG), are suffering serious sluggishness.
The national team faces a double problem when it comes to selecting players. This is because, according to its own rules for the generational change of the national team, all players under the age of 23 except for three wild cards were made up, and it was agreed not to stop the KBO league during the tournament and to select only up to three players from each club. As long as the key players of each team are selected for the national team during the KBO league, the established principles cannot be broken. Considering the current overall condition, the team composition is very messy.
In this Asian Games, Korea’s baseball game will start on October 1st. The national team players will be convened after playing matches in their teams until September 22nd. Since final entry replacements can be made before the start of the tournament, the national team plans to check the condition of the players as closely as possible before convening to confirm replacement players and organize the final entries.
The national team, which is in the process of checking the domestic league for a player replacement, started analyzing the opposing team’s power early.
Head coach Ryu Joong-il and other national team coaches went to Japan last month to watch the business baseball league and analyze Japan’s strength, and then departed for Taiwan on the 23rd. This is to intensively explore the players of interest, especially the pitchers, while watching the Taiwan Professional League.
Korean baseball won three gold medals in a row at the Asian Games in Guangzhou in 2010, Incheon in 2014 and Jakarta-Palembang in 2018. The biggest adversaries in Asia are always Japan and Taiwan.메이저사이트
In this tournament baseball, 8 countries, including 2 countries that went through the preliminaries on September 24-28 and 6 countries that went directly to the finals, including Korea, will be divided into two groups and play the group stage. The top 2 countries in each group, a total of 4 countries, advance to the Super Round and face off against the 2 countries of the opposing group. In the Super Round, which is held with the group stage results as it is, the teams hidden in first and second place will compete in the final for the gold medal.
In the end, Korea’s fate will change depending on whether it is placed in a group with either Japan or Taiwan, but the grouping and matchup have not yet been confirmed. The national team, which is highly likely to be drawn with Taiwan according to the world rankings, anticipates that Taiwan will mobilize not only its own professional league, but also foreign players playing in the US minor league to form the best team.