The baseball team for the Hangzhou 2023 Asian Games is making its final selections.
The baseball team will convene on March 23 to begin training. The 24 players who made the final roster will play KBO games for their respective clubs until the 22nd and then wear the flag on the 23rd.
With the call-up just over two weeks away, the worries are deepening. The national team has won three consecutive gold medals, from Guangzhou 2010 to Incheon 2014 and Jakarta-Palembang 2018. Much like the Tokyo Games two years ago, gold is the obvious goal, but the current state of the team is extremely challenging both on and off the field.메이저사이트
The team announced its final roster as early as June, but as the season progressed, injuries and serious slumps continued to plague the team. On top of that, both Japan and Chinese Taipei have stepped up significantly for this tournament, and both teams are much stronger than before.
All the team can do now is to be as cautious as possible with their substitutions. They will have to choose a replacement for outfielder Lee Jung-hoo, who is out with an injury. The national team has imposed an age limit of 24 and under for this tournament. A replacement outfielder will have to come from within that group, and the only outfielders in the league currently under 24 are complete rookies. There aren’t many options.
“The current replacement is an outfielder,” the team said, but there’s room for more. This is something the national team should be thinking about. Pitcher Koo Chang-mo (NC – Photo). He was injured in early June and is currently in the final stages of rehabilitation. The team selected him as a “wild card” in hopes that he could provide an ace among the young pitchers, but two weeks before the call-up, he still hasn’t returned. The team is expected to announce its replacement roster in the middle of this month, before the call-up. Even if Koo were to return “tomorrow,” there wouldn’t be enough time for him to be fully fit before then.
The lack of performance from the main players is also a concern. Park Se-woong (Lotte) and Ko Woo-seok and Jung Woo-young (LG), who are supposed to be the core of the mound, are struggling. Kang Baek-ho (KT) only recently joined the first team and started pitching. The only amateur pitcher on the roster, Jang Hyun-seok (Masan Yongmago), announced that he was joining Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers and hasn’t been seen in recent games. In response to the controversy, Jang Hyun-seok decided to pitch in the bullpen in front of the national team staff to check his status.
The national team plans to stick to the rules it has already established. No players under the age of 24 and a maximum of three players per club. There is no justification for replacing a player who has already been selected for any reason other than injury or poor performance. The only option is to choose the replacements as carefully as possible and wait for the players to recover. The road to a fourth consecutive gold medal is a tough one.