"I think I lost without trying my best"

Doosan manager Lee Seung-yeop sighed deeply after losing 0-1 in the second wild card game against KT at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul on Sunday. Starting with starting pitcher Choi Seung-yong, Doosan successfully blocked KT's batters with one run, which gained momentum. Usually, when a mound is given one run over nine innings, baseball wins by a high probability. However, Doosan did not do that. As its batters failed to score even a single run, the team fell victim to the tragedy.

Ten years have passed since the introduction of the wild card game system, but the fifth-ranked team has never gone to the semi-playoff after beating the fourth-ranked team. The fourth-ranked team must not lose both games. The fourth-ranked team will also play in the semi-playoff, even with one loss and one draw. It is not easy for the fifth-ranked team to advance to the semi-playoff. In fact, some fifth-ranked teams grabbed the first round, but they could not win two consecutive games. However, Doosan fell victim to bitter upsets as its batters remained silent despite good performances from the mound.

Doosan ended the season with a tragedy of 18 scoreless innings, the most in the history of the wild card game. It was true that the main hitters were not able to do their part and that the batting depth was so weak that they did not have enough resources to replace them. Here is the most regrettable name. It is Yang Eui-ji (37), the team's homeowner and key batter. Yang Eui-ji, who was the best catcher in the league and the most reliable knife in the team, did not contribute enough to the series. It was because of the collarbone injury.

Yang Eui-ji suffered from left clavicle inflammation from the end of the season. He couldn't even go to the last important game of the season. He waited for recovery while taking medicine without injection treatment because it could be a problem with doping, but he was slow. He couldn't swing himself because he was in pain when swinging the bat. Only defense was possible to some extent. Yang Eui-ji was not listed in the starting lineup in both the first and second games.

In the first game, he played only two innings in the eighth inning, and in the second game, he stayed on the bench. If Doosan could have gone out as a pinch hitter on an important opportunity, Doosan could have shown a winning move, but unfortunately, Yang Eui-ji was not in a good physical condition. Both the player and Doosan were in an unfair situation. It would have been fortunate if the offense had gone around to some extent without Yang Eui-ji, but it was a wild card game where Yang Eui-ji's gap seemed to be large.

Yang Eui-ji was also Doosan's winning pitcher. After qualifying as a free agent after the end of the 2018 season, Yang moved to NC Dinos and played for four years. Doosan recruited Yang ahead of the 2023 season. They gave him special treatment worth a total of 15.2 billion won (10.2 million U.S. dollars). Everything was his ambition to win the Korean Series trophy again. It was also a present to congratulate the coach Lee Seung-yeop, who took the helm ahead of the 2023 season.

Yang Eui-ji had a batting average of 0.305, 17 homers and 68 RBIs in 129 games last year. He also had a batting average of 0.314, 17 homers, 94 RBIs and 0.858 on-base plus slugging (OPS) in 119 games this season. It is a batting figure that is lower than his heyday, but it can be said that he showed off the league's best figure as a catcher. Before Yang Eui-ji's time expired, Doosan had a plan to try again to win the Korean Series, but he was eliminated in the wild card game in all of the first two years of Yang Eui-ji's contract period. Since I haven't even used Yang Eui-ji properly this year, my frustration has doubled. 스포츠토토

On the other hand, some critics say that the current state of Doosan, which has been heavily dependent on veteran players, is clear. Manager Lee Seung-yeop also acknowledged this to some extent. "Since the lineup is mainly for veterans, we can't compete with younger players. We had to rely on veterans because younger players couldn't join the team. The problem is that only more important players are appointed because of the gap between the key players and the backup players. Depending on how we narrow the gap, we can become a strong team or let things go as it is," Lee said after the second game on Sunday. Attention is focusing on whether Doosan will be able to come back to fans in 2025 as it solves this problem.