I don’t want to be Lotte’s sore finger. The on-field coaching staff, club front office, and teammates are all looking forward to it. They recognize his potential. This is his sixth year in the team. Now she needs to get a direction and grow to her potential without wandering. Lotte infielder Han Dong-hee, 23, has finally found the answer.
Han entered this year with a lot of expectations. Her momentum was cut short when she suffered a hamstring injury in April, and she was unable to complete her running training and gained a lot of weight. As a result, he began to lose weight from the final camp last fall. The club also pushed him hard enough to seriously consider switching from third base to first base.
He also tried to change his batting mechanics by strengthening his lower body and rotating his torso to add rotational force to his bat, increasing his launch angle and improving his distance. She also tried to change her batting mechanics from a line drive hitter to a fly ball hitter. I listened to the advice of my coach, Park Heung-sik, and started making changes.
But no one knew how big of a test this year would be. He struggled. It was her most lost season since becoming a full-time hitter in 2020. Finally, on May 5, Han Dong-hee was sent down to the second team for her poor performance. Coach Park Heung-sik had always felt bad about her attempts to change and her lack of success.
For ten days, she played baseball in the second team’s stadium, Gimhae Sangdong Stadium, where she was able to clear her head and focus on baseball without stress. Kim Pung-cheol, Lotte’s deputy director of development, who led Han’s recruitment and watched her grow as an amateur, was one of those who lamented her lack of success. After watching her play and train with the second team, Kim briefly shared his thoughts on her struggles and hitting approach, saying, “She needs to think about hitting the first pitch.”
Pitchers are always trying to get first-pitch strikes. There are many opinions that hitters can get good results by utilizing that psychology and being active and aggressive. Once you get a first-pitch strike, you’re at a disadvantage against the pitcher. In baseball, a game of odds, striking out is one way to increase your chances of getting a hit. In fact, this year, the league average batting average is 2.05%, but the batting average for pitches in play is 3.02%. 토토사이트
Han Dong-hee is also hitting 3.8-for-5 on pitches (5-for-13), with three doubles and three RBIs. However, the percentage of pitches she sees in the zone is extremely low. Only 18.9% of his pitches have resulted in a hit. This ranks 45th out of 55 players in regulation. In other words, Han is a conservative hitter when it comes to swinging at pitches.
However, her early pitches have been decisive. With runners on first and second in the third inning of a 2-0 game against the SSG Landers at SSG Landers Field in Incheon, South Korea, on April 18, Han took a 136-kilometer changeup from SSG starter Elias and hit a timely double to left-center field. In his previous at-bat, he saw a 132-kilometer changeup in the middle of the plate and struck out.
However, in her second at-bat, she swung the bat aggressively and got a timely RBI single with runners in scoring position. Also in the top of the fifth inning, with two outs, Han took advantage of the second pitch she saw and hit a single to left field. Her ability to work the count stood out.
On the 15th, she completed her first multi-hit game since returning from a 10-day stint in the second team, and the team won 7-2, breaking out of a four-game losing streak.
After the game, Han Dong-hee explained, “I was thinking about hitting aggressively, but the results weren’t good, so I felt like I was becoming passive, but today I thought about hitting more aggressively, and it led to good results.”