The Hanwha Eagles have named former South Korean national baseball team manager Kim Kyung-moon as their 14th head coach.
Hanwha signed Kim Kyung-moon to a three-year contract (2024-26 season) totaling 2 billion won ($5 million signing bonus and $1.5 billion annual salary) on Feb. 2.
Hanwha’s CEO Park Chan-hyuk and coach Choi Won-ho stepped down from their positions on March 27. The team was at the bottom of the standings for the first time, forcing a change in leadership.
Son Hyuk had also announced his intention to resign, but Park urged him to stay on as a probationary coach. Head coach Chung Kyung-bae took over as acting head coach.
The new head coach was selected by the group itself. Han Yong-duk, Carlos Suvero, and Choi Won-ho were selected by the club’s front office. However, 토토사이트 all three were dismissed after failing to fulfill their terms, and the process was eventually handled by the group.
Hanwha placed a lot of emphasis on experience when hiring a new manager. The group, not the baseball organization, took the lead in selecting the manager.
The candidates included veteran managers with winning records.
The list of candidates was narrowed down to experienced veteran managers, excluding ‘novice managers’ and ‘internal promotions’.
Kim Kyung-moon was the leading candidate, along with other coaches with championship experience. However, the championship-winning coach declined due to personal reasons, and Kim was selected as the head coach.
“With his wealth of experience and accomplishments, we believe he is the right person to lead the team to growth,” Hanwha said in a statement.
Kim began his coaching career with Doosan in 2004 and led the team until 2011. He then coached the NC Dinos from 2011 to mid-2018.
During his time at the helm, Kim has demonstrated his charisma and ability to develop players. In total, Kim has coached over 1,700 games as a head coach, 사설 토토사이트 with a record of 886 wins, 30 draws, and 774 losses (0.537 winning percentage). In his 14 seasons with the first team, he reached the postseason 10 times and the Korean Series four times.
During his time at Doosan, he developed national team players such as Kim Hyun-soo, Son Si-heon, Lee Jong-wook, Ko Young-min, and Min Byung-heon, and from 2012 to 2018, he developed Na Sung-beom, Park Min-woo, Lee Jae-hak, Kwon Hee-dong, and Koo Chang-mo into mainstays for the NC Dinos, which became a powerhouse in a short period of time.
While he has yet to win a Korean Series title, he has also been strong in the short term as the manager of the 2008 Beijing Olympic baseball team, winning nine gold medals.
Hanwha hasn’t lifted a championship trophy since 1999.
Since 2008, they have made the postseason just once.
Kim In-sik, Kim Eung-yong, and Kim Sung-geun, once dubbed the “Three Kims,” have all been at the helm, but all have ended their stints with Hanwha with disappointment.
In recent years, the team has changed managers so often that it has been called a “graveyard of managers. Since 2010, there have been five coaches (Han Dae-il, Kim Sung-geun, Han Yong-duk, Subero, Choi Won-ho) who have resigned during the season.
This is the second year in a row that the team has had a change in leadership. Last year, the team parted ways with Carlos Subero and signed a three-year contract with Choi Won-ho. This year, he led the spring camp for the first time and started setting up the team, but he didn’t finish the season.
Kim’s appointment was met with a mix of concern and anticipation.
Some were worried. Kim stepped down as NC head coach in the middle of the 2018 season and hasn’t been around since. He was the head coach of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but that was three years ago. There were some concerns that it might take him a while to adjust after being away from the KBO scene for so long.
However, there are those who are looking forward to seeing a different side of him, as he has taken a keen interest in the future of baseball, including youth baseball, and in the summer of 2022, he traveled to the United States to coach Rookie League players in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.
“It’s a tremendous honor to be the head coach of the Hanwha Eagles,” said Kim. “We have a lot of young and promising players, 안전놀이터 and the recent addition of veterans has made the team even stronger. I look forward to working with the coaches and players to deliver great baseball to the fans,” said Kim.
Kim will hold an inauguration ceremony and press conference at the Hanwha Life Eagles Park PR Center at 2 p.m. on March 3, and will immediately travel to Suwon, South Korea, to take the helm of the team starting with an away game against KT Wiz on March 4.