“I wanted to help the team secure a spot in the semi-playoffs.”
SSG Landers fulfilled Choo Shin-soo’s wishes and clinched third place with a 5-0 victory over the Doosan Bears in the final game of the regular season at SSG Landers Field in Incheon on April 17. Coming in as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the seventh inning, Choo Shin-soo caught a changeup from Doosan’s Park Shin-ji and dropped it in front of the second baseman, sprinting to first base for a safe out.
Shin-soo Choo, a third-year player in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), started the season as the team’s No. 1 hitter but slumped to a .184 average in 22 games in April and a .229 average in 15 games in May while playing with a sore right ankle, prompting a trip to the second team. He returned after 20 days on the disabled list and felt better, hitting .333 in 11 games in June.토토사이트
He slumped again last month with a 0.156 batting average, at the same time SSG slumped to sixth place with a 6-2 record and the lowest winning percentage in the league (0.286). The reversal came with a twist. When Shin-soo Choo hit safely in five consecutive games this month, SSG jumped to third place with a 10-2 record. “There were a lot of twists and turns,” Choo said after the final game, “but we finished the regular season in third place, proving that the last championship wasn’t a fluke. It’s a meaningful achievement.”
The key to SSG’s rebound is “two-hit balance. In addition to the awakening of ace Kim Kwang-hyun, who went 2-0 with a 1.59 ERA in three games in October, Oh Won-seok pitched two quality starts (six innings or less). On the 8th, when starter Loenis Elias went down, the Dinos won 10-8 thanks to a multi-homer game from leadoff hitter Oh Tae-gon and a four-RBI combination from Han Yoo-seom and Ha Jae-hoon. At 40, Shin-soo Choo is in the twilight of his baseball career and has his eyes set on the fall season. “I learned a lot from watching my teammates overcome bad situations. It’s amazing,” he said, adding, “I’ll think about next year’s plans after we play the postseason hard and have fun.”