Five head coaches in the last year of the contract, who will make it a successful 2025?

Five head coaches in the last year of the contract, who will make it a successful 2025?

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For coaches of five out of the 10 KBO League teams, the last year of their contracts has come. They are the SSG Landers and Kiwoom Heroes, who ranked 6th and 10th respectively with the LG Twins, the Samsung Lions and the Doosan Bears, who ranked in the postseason last year. The performance of this season is very important to the coaches of these five teams.메이저놀이터

LG, Doosan and Samsung have all signed three-year contracts with their head coaches ahead of the 2023 season. So far, the three teams have made good performances. However, the standard has been raised just as much. In 2025, we desperately need to make bigger achievements in the postseason (PS).

LG and Doosan left disappointment last year. In 2023, the first year of manager Yeom Kyung-yeop's inauguration, he won the combined title and started the 2024 season as the defending champion, but ranked third. His goal was to win the title for two consecutive games, which was disappointing. Last year, he neglected to strengthen the mound somewhat, but this year, he brought in top-class bullpen pitchers such as Jang Hyun-sik and Kim Kang-ryul as free agents to renew his commitment. We wonder if LG will rise to the top again.

Since the inauguration of manager Lee Seung-yeop (49), Doosan has posted a winning rate of over .500 (74 wins, 2 draws and 68, 0.521) with the same performance in both seasons, and has advanced to the PS. However, Lee has yet to win in PS. He left the mound early in fall baseball after losing the first game to the NC Dinos, the fourth-ranked team in the regular season, and the first and second games to the KT Wiz, the fifth-ranked team, in the WC match last year. This year, he will not only report his first win in PS, but he should also fly to higher ground.

Samsung, led by head coach Park Jin-man (49), went straight to the playoff and became the runner-up at the Korea Series last year, reversing its assessment that it was weak. The remarkable achievement is compared with eighth place in 2023. However, this year's eye level is not much different from that of LG and Doosan. For this reason, Samsung focused its efforts on strengthening the mound by recruiting Choi Won-tae, a free agent pitcher, and Ariel Furado, a foreign pitcher who showed the best performance for Kiwoom.

Kiwoom renewed its three-year contract with Hong Won-ki (52) ahead of the 2023 season, and SSG signed a two-year contract with Lee Sung-yong (54) ahead of the last season. The two teams have different stances. Kiwoom aims to rebuild the team, and SSG aims to achieve both results and development. Therefore, the two teams have different stances on their performance.

Kiwoom seems to regard 2026 as the right time to take a leap forward. 2026 is the year that ace pitcher Ahn Woo-jin plays full-time for the first time since his call-up was lifted in September this year. The best scenario for the 2025 season is that a player will join the team. For Hong, who has advanced to the WC finals and won the runner-up prize in the KS since his first inauguration in 2021, the team is looking for a "loss" that will lead the team to advance to the PS again.

SSG tried to catch two birds with one stone last year, but ended up with a "half-success." It was about advancing to PS and finding promising players. Rookie infielders Park Ji-hwan and Jeong Joon-jae appeared, but failed to make it to PS after losing in the final round for fifth place. It must advance to PS this year.