Kiwoom Choi Joo-hwan is Excluded from Batting Slump
Kim Jae-hwan and Oh Jae-il are also struggling… Kim Hyun-soo and Choi Hyeong-woo have unchanging skills.
Professional baseball Kiwoom Heroes infielder Choi Joo-hwan (36), who was excluded from the first team entry on the 4th, was one of the players who missed many hits due to defensive shifts until last year.
As the KBO secretariat established a new defensive shift restriction rule that states ‘infielders must not leave the infield dirt’ to ensure exciting games starting this season, Choi Joo-hwan was confident that his performance would improve. 파워볼사이트 추천
In the meantime, many left-handed hitters in the league have complained that if a properly pulled batted ball is caught by a second baseman who has moved his defensive position in front of right field, or a so-called ‘second baseman’, the flow of the batting itself is shaken.
Choi Joo-hwan, who contributed numerous out counts to the ‘2nd baseman’, moved from SSG Landers to Kiwoom this year and started anew, but after failing to get out of a slump with a batting average of 0.182, 4 home runs, and 17 RBIs, he decided to take time to readjust in the 2nd team.
The defensive shift mainly took place against left-handed batters.
Although it is difficult to find a team that places fielders between 3rd and 2nd base against hard-pulling right-handed batters, there were many teams that concentrated defenders between 1st and 2nd base against left-handed batters.
Therefore, the prevailing view was that limiting defensive shifts would be advantageous to left-handed hitters, especially hard-pulling sluggers.
When you actually open the lid, you don’t see any results that are particularly advantageous to left-handed hitters.
Last year, the overall batting average in the KBO League was 0.263 and OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) was 0.712, and the batting average for left-handed hitters was 0.266 and OPS 0.710.
This season, the league’s overall batting average is 0.275 with an OPS of 0.764, and the batting average for left-handed hitters is 0.276 with an OPS of 0.763.
The league’s overall batting average and OPS have slightly increased due to changes in the official ball’s coefficient of restitution and the introduction of the Automatic Pitching System (ABS), but the impact of restrictions on defensive shift is not significant.
Even if defensive shifts are limited, each team is responding by moving infielders to the limit.
It can be said that these results prevented left-handed hitters from gaining prominence.
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