"Nightmare's 2nd Draft
November 17th, 2023
is different this time
It no longer calls the Doosan Bears "Hwa-moong Baseball." He missed key players in the free agent (FA) market, and in the second draft, he lost countless players who should have come up.
The second draft was extremely painful. It was the second draft, which was started with the aim of helping reinforce the power by actively moving players between clubs and leveling the somewhat unbalanced power, but the leak was severe only in certain teams. Doosan was a representative.
In the five second drafts, which started in 2012 and ran until 2020 every other year, Doosan sent 22 players away. It proves that there were so many promising resources.
If a certain team recruits a grade A FA player, the original team can bring in compensation players in addition to the 20 protected players. However, depending on the team's circumstances, there were many cases where he complained that he didn't see a suitable player even for this.
Furthermore, as many as 40 people were grouped into protection players. Nevertheless, Doosan had to leave the limit that it could send under the system every time.
It's not just about numbers. I sent quality players. In 2012, sidearm Kim Sung-bae left the team after receiving a first-round pick from the Lotte Giants. After recording 14 holds that year, he made 31 saves the following year to secure Lotte's back door.
Lee Jae-hak was a highly anticipated pitcher for Doosan, but he played only 16 games and left for the new team NC Dinos. Since 2013, when NC, which started in the second division, joined the first division in earnest, Lee Jae-hak has won double-digit games for four consecutive years. He added five more wins so far this season, giving NC a total of 82 wins. Doosan's victory was just one win.
In 2018, Lotte took Oh Hyun-taek as a third-round pick. After moving to Lotte, he won the hold king by taking 25 holds in his first season and performed well for four seasons.
Shin Min-jae, who led LG's unified victory this season, also wore the LG uniform as the second draft for Doosan. He joined Doosan as a fostering player in 2015 and did not get a chance in the first division, but he did not show much performance even after being selected for the third round by LG, but played 122 games this year, his fifth season, with a batting average of 0.277 and 37 steals, contributing to LG's first win in 29 years.
Of course, there were cases where Doosan had fun. Ahead of 2015, Doosan returned Jung Jae-hoon, who wore a Lotte uniform as a compensation player as Jang Won-joon headed to Doosan as an FA and returned to the third-round pick in the second draft the following year. Lotte fell into a slump, and the former team was even more disappointed in 2015 when it won Doosan for the first time in 14 years, but it scored 23 holds in 2016, contributing to the team's unified victory.
However, even this was not a perfect scenario. The major shoulder injury he suffered in 2016 accelerated his retirement.
Furthermore, it has advanced to the Korean Series for seven consecutive years since 2015, falling behind in the rookie draft. This situation was also related to the fact that many second-tier players did not see such expectations and did not find any hope for generational change this season.
The second draft, which was revived after four years, will be held on the 22nd. Doosan will make its sixth first-round pick as it proceeds in the reverse order of the previous season's ranking. Nevertheless, what raises expectations is that from this time on, the number of protected players for each team has been reduced to 35 instead of 40. Instead, the transfer amount rose to 400 million won in the first round, 300 million won in the second round, and 200 million won in the third round, respectively.
On the other hand, there are not many resources to pay attention to from other teams. Nightmares like the past are likely not to be reproduced.
The reality is that more resources are needed for a successful generational change. Will Doosan finally be able to smile in the 6th second draft of the KBO.
