Review: South Korea vs. Taiwan in Premier12 Baseball (3-6 Loss)
This article was translated from the original Korean post with AI assistance. Prices in parentheses are approximate conversions. Read the original Korean post →
I've never written a post about baseball before, but after losing to Taiwan yesterday, I decided to organize and share the thoughts I posted on Threads.
https://m.sports.naver.com/video/1257611
https://m.sports.naver.com/kbaseball/article/001/0015045839
These two articles are the ones in question. There are others, but they have a similar direction and content.
Even when Manager Ryu Joong-il was managing the LG Twins (Seoul baseball team), one of the reasons he did well up to the pennant race but kept failing in the postseason was that he'd leave the starting pitcher in even when their pitches were bad, making the situation much worse. Unless he has an ideal roster where the players' abilities are so good that he just needs to manage them a bit and divide up the innings—like during the Samsung Lions dynasty—he's one of those managers who struggles to use his power properly in short-term series.
When Ko Young-pyo, the subject of the second article, toys with LG's absurd lefty lineup despite being an underhand pitcher, it's because his trademark nasty changeup comes mixed with his fastball. Even from a spectator's perspective, his biggest strength is throwing pitches where you have no idea if it's going to be a fastball or a changeup, but it seems that changeup just wasn't there today. Of course, there were about three pitches that entered the zone but weren't called strikes, which might have shaken him. Whatever the reason, the manager should have caught on quickly and used a bullpen swarm strategy. Since it's post-season, the players' conditions can't all be the same. Therefore, he needed to look at the small details and make big decisions.
Moon Bo-gyeong, the treasure of our team (LG), has seen his condition drop since the playoffs, which is likely a stamina issue. I don't know on what basis he was put in the starting lineup, but it feels like they only prepared based on regular-season records. He's our boy, but looking at it objectively, rather than starting right now, it would be better to use him as a backup to rest and aim for one big hit. Alternatively, it would have been nice to move him down the batting order, but since he's a corner infielder, dropping him down probably wasn't easy.
Looking at the national team's manager and coaching staff, many are from our team. LG currently holds a lot of the KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) front office roles, but based on name value alone, it's not a coaching staff that should cause much controversy. However, as LG fans know well, their common trait is that they are weak in short-term series and their main strength is player management. Manager Youm Kyoung-youb is currently getting brutally criticized by LG fans for failing to win back-to-back championships, but I still think it's right for him to lead the LG Twins for now. The reason is that, unlike previous managers, he exhausts the opponents regardless of whether it's a short or long series, and he makes maddening decisions—making you wonder if he's playing baseball or pachinko—to try and seize the momentum. This trait becomes even more prominent in short-term series, which is a style of baseball rarely seen from the Twins in the past. I believe it was thanks to this manager's crazy gambles that we won the championship for the first time in 29 years, unlike previous managers who couldn't win despite having good rosters.Therefore, I think today's loss was more of a managerial misjudgment than a poor performance by Ko Young-pyo and the other players. Looking at the bigger picture, I wonder if it's an issue with the association for selecting a coaching staff that is weak in short-term series. Especially since they are playing after the league has ended, their conditions are bound to fluctuate. On top of that, many players are young and playing for the national team for the first time, so the coaching staff should have paid more attention. Also, the lack of left-handed pitchers to handle left-handed batters is a problem, so I think there were mistakes in the national team selection itself.Of course, the reporters probably wrote provocatively to make baseball fans even more enraged and drive up clicks. And Manager Ryu Joong-il has been cursed out more than once for his interview attitude—which LG and Samsung fans know well—where he just states the results without any modifiers. So honestly, I just brush off this interview thinking, "That old guy is doing it again after a loss," but other fans experiencing Ryu for the first time probably lashed out in anger, yelling, "What did our boy do wrong!!!"Since things didn't go well against Taiwan, it seems right to just let go of expectations for this tournament. I just hope our boys don't get hurt, soak up all the experience, and come back without getting any hate, but I'm worried because it seems like everyone except Hong Chang-ki is already getting a lot of criticism.
Please just don't get hurt ㅠㅠ
Please just don't get hurt ㅠㅠ