The 5th inning is a tough start, the 9th inning is unstoppable… Lotte gasps every day

 It is difficult to endure day by day on the mound of Lotte Giants. The starters should do their part and the finish should be solid, but neither is working properly. 

Lotte lost 8-12 in the match against the LG Twins held at Sajik Stadium in Busan on the 12th. At the end of the 8th inning, which was trailing 4-5, Ko Seung-min’s three-run homer turned the score around to 7-5, but Kim Won-joong, who finished the ninth inning, was beaten by Kim Hyeon-soo again and gave up a lot of runs. As a result, Lotte could not continue the momentum of the thrilling 1-point victory in the previous day (11th). The series record is 1 win and 1 loss. 

Lotte Mound is currently in crisis. It’s a red flag every day. First of all, in a situation where the starting lineup is not holding up properly, they are playing close games every day, and the bullpen is already being consumed. 

The starting lineup is having a hard time starting with the one-two punch they trusted and the native ace filling the 5th inning. Episode 6 is hard to watch. Na Gyun-an is only leading the team with a special record of 2 wins, 0 average ERA in 2 games and 13⅔ innings. It is bad news right away that foreign one-two punches Dan Strayley and Charlie Barnes failed to enter the original orbit. Strayley has an average ERA of 5.73 (7 earned runs in 11 innings)안전놀이터 while digesting 5 innings and 6 innings, respectively, in 2 games. All of them lost a lot of points in the beginning and played the game with the atmosphere of the game. Barnes also only scored 4 earned runs in 4⅓ innings in his first appearance against LG on the 11th. Park Se-woong, a native glasses ace, also struggled with 3 runs in 5 innings on the 12th, but the process of going to the 5th was also difficult. A record of 4.65 in 2 games (5 earned runs in 9⅔ innings).

When the starting lineup cannot sustain the long innings, the bullpen is naturally overloaded. The bullpen, lacking in both quality and quantity, is exacerbating the situation. The reality is that a vicious cycle continues. Rookie left-hander Lee Tae-yeon was brilliant. However, he took the mound in 6 of the 8 games the team played and his performance is getting worse. The process of going to the Pil Seung-jo line between Koo Seung-min and Kim Won-joong is not smooth, and the overload is concentrated on the last two players. Lee Min-seok’s elbow surgery and Choi Jun-yong’s sluggishness have loosened his waistline, but the starting lineup is also a problem, so in many ways the worst situations are being repeated. 

The moment when setup man Koo Seung-min and closer Kim Won-joong had to take charge of 3 innings from the 7th inning to keep a 6-4 lead against LG on the 11th was a scene that clearly explained the chaos of the current Lotte bullpen. We managed to win 6-5, but it was tough.

In the end, Kim Won-jung, who threw 24 pitches in 1⅓ innings on the 11th, came up from a 7-5 lead in the game on the 12th, but was beaten by Kim Hyun-soo in the final two-run four. I had to watch the team lose while committing a blown save.

On the 12th, after outfielder Seongbin Hwang was excluded from the entry due to a microfracture in his finger, calling up pitcher Myeongjun Yoon, not the same outfielder, was also a measure to be concerned about overloading the bullpen. However, it is only a temporary measure and cannot be seen as a number of reversals. In the end, we have to hope that the pitching staff quickly recovers and the bullpen resources such as Choi Jun-yong, Choi Yi-joon, Moon Kyung-chan, and Lee Jin-ha recover quickly and get called up. Until then, Lotte Mound has to endure the day panting every day.