A ‘Kim Kang-min’ whirlwind has hit the baseball world.
It was created when the Hanwha Eagles selected SSG Landers’ Kim Kang-min, 41, in the fourth round of the secondary draft on April 22.
There is no longer a Kim Kang-min in an Incheon uniform.
The secondary draft was suspended after 2019 and revived this year.
The idea was to give players with limited playing time a second chance.
A player who is worth 50 Won in Team A might be worth 100 Won in Team B.
This is because each team has its own needs.
Each team created a 35-player reserve list based on their usage, and ESG excluded Kim Kang-min, who had played for only one team for 23 years, including the former Eskay (SK) Wyverns, from the 35-player list.
“We were discussing retirement and leadership training with him,”
the organization said, adding that it was only after he was named to the roster that the organization became confused.
According to the KBO, clubs received their first list of protected and designated players on Nov. 14.
This means that the ESG had eight days to explain the situation with Kim Kang-min to the other nine clubs’ general managers and seek their understanding before the day of the second draft.
However, the ESG leadership did not take any action.
Complacency is not the only explanation.
Furthermore, the roster itself had ample safeguards.
Players who had announced their intentions to enlist in the military or retire could be marked off.
However, ESG didn’t do anything about Kim Kang-min, simply going into the second round of the draft with the idea that no other team would draft a player who would be 42 next year.
It was a lucky break.
If Choo Shin-soo, who is the same age as Kim Kang-min, wasn’t an auto-protected player (in his first to third year), I wonder if ESG would have left him off the 35-man roster. 토토
After the second round of the draft, Kim Sung-yong said, “How do you anticipate it (the pick)?” and seemed somewhat frustrated.
However, it’s a team manager’s job to meticulously analyze other teams’ draft prospects and build a roster of protected players.
The other nine teams ran multiple simulations to build their 35-man rosters, crying and mustarding prospects and giving up veterans.
If I had a strong desire to extend his contract, I should have kept him on the 35-man roster and negotiated later.
That would have been the least they could have done for a franchise player who led the team to five championships.
If the team didn’t see eye-to-eye during the subsequent negotiations and had to release him as a free agent, so be it.
In fact, since the end of last year, ESG has been on an inexplicable run.
They fired manager Ryu Sun-kyu, who led them to their first unified title since their founding, and this year they fired coach Kim Won-hyung, who had two years left on his contract.
They pulled out coach Son Si-heon, who was undergoing coaching training with the help of the NC Dinos, leaked speculation that LG Twins hitting coach Lee Ho-joon was the next manager ahead of the Korean Series, and removed Kim Kang-min from the protected list.
The club said it was “35 players,” but given the number of automatic reserves, the club was stuck with 45 players.
It can be assumed that inside ESG, Kim Kang-min’s retirement next year was already a foregone conclusion.
Worst of all, ESG left the choice to Kim Kang-min.
Kim will now have to decide whether to stay in the Hanwha jersey or take an unplanned retirement.
Either way, the scars will remain.
Esuji’s winter move is a bitter pill to swallow for a ’23-year one-club man’.
