The Hanwha Eagles, who are in ninth place in the 2023 KBO League, changed their entry ahead of the match against the LG Twins in Jamsil on the 20th. Hanwha excluded O’Grady, a foreign hitter who suffered from poor batting, from the first team, and let infielder Lee Do-yoon join the first team.
In the match on the 19th, Hanwha lost 1-3 to LG, but O’Grady was not used. It was possible to infer that Hanhwa, who had lost due to silence in the lineup, did not use O’Grady as a pinch hitter, so there was no expectation from the bench. This is the second 1st team erasure since it was canceled from the 1st team due to poor hitting for 18 days from April 23rd. The prevailing view is that the Hanwha team’s decision to release O’Grady is imminent.
Hanwha did not renew the contract with Tuckman, a foreign hitter who played an active role last year, after the season. In the 2022 season, Tuchman played in all 144 games, hitting 0.289 with 12 homers, 43 RBIs, and an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.796. He finished with a batting average of 2.9, a double-digit home run, and an OPS close to 0.8.
※ Hanwha O’Grady 2023 season key records
The WAR (based on the Kaby Report), which indicates the contribution to victory compared to substitute players, was 4.21, ranking first among hitters on the team. However, Hanwha did not accompany Tuchman this year because he was not a big shot hitter and lacked clutch ability. 카지노사이트
The new foreign hitter to replace Tuchman is O’Grady, who has experience in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), and Hanwha signed a contract for a total of 900,000 dollars. The reason for the recruitment was that there would be no problem adapting to the KBO league with experience in Asian baseball. O’Gredi had a low batting average of 0.114 OPS and 0.550 in the demonstration game, but he recorded 3 homers and 10 RBIs, raising expectations for his slugging power and solving ability.
However, once the regular season started, O’Grady was reduced to a hitter with no advantages. He has appeared in 22 games and he has a batting average of 0.125 with no home runs and 8 RBIs with an OPS of 0.337. WAR is -1.13, which is the lowest among hitters in the league.
O’Grady only walked 5 while striking out 40, giving him a so-called ‘bolsambi’ ratio of 0.12 walks to strikeouts. It is no exaggeration to say that his basic pioneering ability has completely collapsed. Nonetheless, he has never hit a home run, so it is not fair to classify him as a ‘gang-gal-po’. This is why some voices say that it would have been desirable for Hanwha to renew the contract with Tuckman.
This season, Hanwha ranked 10th with a batting average of 0.223, 7th with 20 home runs, 10th with an OPS of 0.617, and 10th with an average score per game of 3.49, all of which are the lowest in all important hitting indicators other than home runs. Other than Chae Eun-seong and Roh Si-hwan, the rest of the batters in Hanwha’s batting line are even getting a cold evaluation that it will be difficult to secure a starter if they go to another team. In the midst of this, even the foreign hitter O’Grady did not play a role at all, so Hanwha ranked ninth with an odds rate of 0.361, which was not out of the 30% range.
Hanwha has already used one of the two foreign player substitution cards as foreign pitcher Smith was withdrawn due to injury and Sanchez was brought in. If O’Grady is expelled and a new foreign hitter is brought in, the limit of two foreign players will be exhausted. Attention is focusing on whether Hanhwa, desperate to escape the bottom ranks, will succeed in rebounding by replacing foreign batters.