Lotte Giants manager Kim Tae-hyung has not received a single external FA gift since his appointment.
Lotte officially announced on Oct. 20 that it appointed its 21st manager Kim Tae-hyung. Kim, who started his managerial career with the Doosan Bears in 2015, is a "winning contractor" who led Doosan to advance to the Korean Series for seven consecutive years and win three Korean Series titles.
Coach Kim Tae-hyung urged Jeon Joon-woo and An Chi-hong, who applied for FA ahead of the 2024 season, to maintain their full strength. The two continued to play despite other high-paying players in their team failing to meet the required number of times, and managed to make ends meet. They were the main pillars of Lotte's batting lineup, which ranked first and second in RBIs and OPS among hitters.
Lotte gave Jeon a four-year contract worth 4.7 billion won (3.7 million U.S. dollars), but lost An Chi-hong to the Hanwha Eagles. Instead, it filled An Chi-hong's vacancy by recruiting Oh Sun-jin and Choi Hang in the second draft held in November last year.
Two of Lotte's most valuable internal resources applied for the free agent in the Stove League. They were Kim Won-joong, the closing pitcher, and Koo Seung-min, the setup man. Despite ups and downs this year, the two are team franchise stars, each with Lotte's most saves (132 saves) and holds (121 holds). Lotte has renewed its contract with Kim Won-joong (a total of 5.4 billion won for four years) and Koo Seung-min (a maximum of 2.1 billion won (a total of 2.1 billion won for two plus two years), who are virtually irreplaceable.
Lotte, which has been focusing on cracking down on internal FA for two consecutive years, has not had time to pay attention to recruiting external resources, seems to be moving away from recruiting external FA next year.
According to the total amount of the top 40 annual salary for each club in 2024 announced by KBO on the 18th, Lotte paid 11.15 billion won in annual salary, narrowly not exceeding the upper limit of the competitive equal tax with 276.2 million won left. If the upper limit of the competitive equal tax is exceeded, 50% of the excess will be paid to the baseball development fund.
The upper limit of the 2025 competitive equal tax announced by KBO is KRW 13.711.65 billion, up 20% from this year. If the salary cap remains the same next year, Lotte, which has already renewed its contracts for the past two years, and high-paid players such as FA Yoo Kang-nam and Roh Jin-hyuk, who were recruited before the appointment of head coach Kim Tae-hyung, are likely to not be able to open their wallets boldly in the next stove league. 안전놀이터
In the end, Lotte has no choice but to wait for the revival of high-priced free agents. Yoo Kang-nam and Noh Jin-hyuk, who were brought in by "big" investments ahead of the 2023 season, are already considered failures at half the contract period. Yoo had the worst record of 0.191 in batting average (26 hits in 136 times at bat) with five home runs, 20 RBIs and an OPS of 0.599 until June this year, but ended the season early due to knee injury. Roh also gave up the starting position to Park Seung-wook, recording a batting average of 0.219 (30 hits in 137 times at bat) with two home runs and 13 RBIs in 73 games with an OPS of 0.604.