The World Baseball Classic (WBC) is still in progress, but Korea has already exited because it was eliminated in the first round. Currently, the quarterfinals are in full swing, with Japan and Cuba advancing to the semifinals, while the quarterfinals between Mexico and Puerto Rico and the United States and Venezuela remain.
Now, it has become ‘someone else’s business’ for Korea, but there is still a Korean national team player who is running in first place.
If you look at the individual title rankings, you can see that Korean players are ranked first in the home run category alone. Ha-seong Kim (27, San Diego Padres) is ranked first with three homers left in this tournament.
Kim Ha-sung hit three home runs in this tournament alone, with two home runs against the Czech Republic on the 12th and a grand slam against China on the 13th. Coincidentally, all three hits he left in this tournament were home runs.안전놀이터
Ha-seong Kim still occupies the first place in the home run category alone. However, he is likely to be reversed soon. Twelve players were tied for second place with two homers. Among them, Park Kun-woo and Yang Eui-ji are also included. Among the six surviving countries, Maki Shogo (Japan), Joey Menesis (Mexico), and Anthony Santender (Venezuela) are recording two home runs.
If Korea had advanced to the quarterfinals beyond the first round, wouldn’t Ha-sung Kim’s home run show have continued? The birth of a new ‘WBC home run king’ could have been expected, but the reality was that he was eliminated in the first round, and Kim Ha-seong has returned to his current team, San Diego. He was very active with 3 hits, 1 RBI and 2 points in 3 at-bats in the exhibition game he played right after returning to San Diego, so it was clear that his sense of hitting had risen.
Examples of Korean players winning home runs in the WBC can be found in the 2006 and 2009 tournaments. In the 2006 WBC, Lee Seung-yeop, who surprised the world baseball world by hitting 5 homers, became the first home run king. This year, Kim Ha-seong is narrowly ranked first in the home run category, but he is already maintaining an uneasy lead as Korea finishes its schedule.
Korea is tied for the lead with Australia with 7 team home runs, including 3 home runs by Kim Ha-sung. The team’s batting average is .336, which is first. However, it is unreasonable to say that it is a meaningful record because the impact of exploding 22 points, the highest ever in the tournament, in the match against China. On the other hand, the team’s ERA is only 16th at 7.55. In Korea, the sluggish pitching staff was more painful than batting. Korea’s WBC schedule might not have ended if it had been more effectively blocked against Australia or Japan.