Year of the sluggers this KBO season

Wilin Rosario of the Hanwha Eagles runs to first base after hitting a home run in the bottom of the sixth inning during his team’s game against the KT Wiz at Daejeon Hanwha Life Eagles Park, Friday. / Yonhap

Kim Jae-hwan of the Doosan Bears hits a homerun in the bottom of the fourth inning in a game against the Kia Tigers at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul, Tuesday. Kim leads the league in homeruns with 14. / Yonhap

By Baek Byung-yeul

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) League no longer features major leaguer Park Byung-ho or Yamaico Navarro, who led the KBO League in home runs last year with 53 and 48 respectively, but “the Year of Hitters” is still the keyword this year in the country’s top baseball league.

On Sunday, 22 home runs were produced in five games ― fans witnessed a whopping eight home runs in a game between the Hanwha Eagles and the KT Wiz; and seven long balls in a game between the Samsung Lions and the NC Dinos.

Before the season’s start, many expected that the number of home runs would decrease with the seemingly convincing logic ― the KBO had decided to use one official ball this season to dispel the debate about “juiced-up balls”; slugging hitters like Park and Navarro left the league; and the Nexen Heroes would no longer play at their smallish Mokdong Baseball Stadium where 200 home runs were produced last year.

The argument seemed reasonable, that is, until April was over. Though the league had seen the most home runs in its history last year with 1,511, an average of 2.11 home runs per game, only 209 home runs were produced in 118 games last month, which is an average of 1.77 home runs a game.

But in May, earlier expectations turned out to be wrong. As of Monday, 10 KBO teams have played a total of 207 games and the average number of home runs increased to 1.99.

There seem to be various explanations for this phenomenon, but one undeniable fact is the advent of imported hitters. As the KBO allowed teams to have three imported players and only two of them could be pitchers since the 2014 season, teams began contracting with imported hitters and that consequently led to an increase in home runs.

Currently, Luis Jimenez of the LG Twins and Eric Thames of the Dinos have hit the second most home runs with 13, following the league’s home run leader Kim Jae-hwan of the Doosan Bears with 14.

The Lotte Giants slugger Choi Jun-seok placed fourth after hitting 11 home runs and Min Byung-hun of the Bears, Choi Hyoung-woo of the Lions and Choi Jeong of the SK Wyverns followed the leading hitters with 10 each.

Willin Rosario of the Eagles is also emerging, hitting nine home runs. The former major league catcher who had hit only one homer in April, has already added eight home runs this month.

Dinos break ground for new ball park

The Dinos held a ground-breaking ceremony for their new baseball park, Saturday. It has been five years since the Dinos, based in Changwon, became the ninth KBO club based, some 400 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

At the ceremony held at their current home Masan Baseball Park, some 10,000 Dinos fans and guests including Changwon Mayor Ahn Sang-woo and the KBO President Koo Bon-neung, were in attendance.

The Changwon City Government said the new ball park will be built on the grounds of Masan Stadium, a multipurpose stadium located right next to Masan Baseball Stadium.

The new baseball park, which will open for the 2019 baseball season, will have a capacity of 22,000 seats. The city government said the new ball park will be a 365-day operation. Given that only about 70 baseball games are held a year, it said it will also add a baseball museum, family park, an outdoor wedding hall and a camping site.