“Don’t you feel like senior Koo Dae-sung?”
Lee Seung-yeop, head coach of the Doosan Bears, is keeping a close eye on left-hander Lee Byung-hun (20) during the spring camp in Australia. A high-ranking Doosan official watched Lee Byung-hun’s bullpen pitching at the Blacktown Baseball Stadium in Sydney, Australia on the 4th and said, “Coach Lee Seung-yeop is planning to use Lee Byung-hun as a left-handed bullpen. He looks good right now and is one of the players to look forward to.” hinted that
After watching Lee Byung-hun’s bullpen pitching, coach Lee said, “I’m watching all the left-handed pitchers closely, but Lee Byung-hun is throwing a good ball. I’m trying to put pressure on the player because I have to do a very important job. So Lee Byung-hun should do well. He is currently throwing the most powerful ball among the left-handed bullpens. He will do a good job in good condition.”
At the same time, he mentioned Goo Dae-sung, who is ‘undefeated by Daesung’. Koo Dae-seong joined the Binggrae Eagles (now Hanwha Eagles) in 1993 as the first choice and played as a Hanwha one-club man until 2010. He is a legendary left-handed pitcher in the KBO League with 67 wins, 214 saves, 18 holds, 1128⅔ innings, 1221 strikeouts, and an earned run average of 2.85 in 569 career games. Coach Lee was a teammate who won a bronze medal together at the 2002 Sydney Olympics. Koo Dae-seong, who currently lives in Australia, visited the training ground on the first day of spring camp training on the 1st and chatted with coach Lee for a while, cheering him on for the future. 메이저놀이터
Prior to his retirement in 2017, coach Lee also picked Koo Dae-seong as the best pitcher in the KBO League. Coach Lee is the “national hitter” who hit 467 homers, the most ever in the KBO league, but he couldn’t use his strength in front of Koo Dae-seong. He had a career batting average of 0.118 (6 hits in 51 at-bats) and 1 home run against Koo Dae-seong. Director Lee was satisfied when he found in young Lee Byung-hun the image of Goo Dae-sung, who was like a grim reaper to him.
Director Lee said, “Lee Byung-hun gives off a sense of senior Koo Dae-sung. It’s a matter of knowing it after he’s played in real life and after going into the season, but so far everything has been showing only good looks.”
Lee Byung-hun made a name for himself as a left-handed pitcher when he was a sophomore at Seoul High School, throwing fast balls that exceeded 150 km/h. Although there was a brief crisis due to elbow surgery in his junior year, Doosan put more weight on Lee Byung-hun’s possibility and wrote the first name card in 2022.
Until high school, Lee Byung-hun was known for his good pitch, but poor control. When he joined Doosan and completed rehabilitation, and during the actual match check at the end of last season, insiders said, “The pitch is so good that batters don’t seem to be able to capture it even if they don’t have control.”
But now it’s different. His arm is healthy enough that he doesn’t have to worry about it now, and the experience he gained by appearing in 9 games in the first team last year became nourishment for him to prepare for this year. Will Byung-Hun Lee spend this spring well and play as a member of the winning team during the regular season, proving the coach’s evaluation that he “feels like a senior Dae-Sung Koo”?