Son Ah-seop (36, NC Dinos) and Yang Hyun-jong (36, KIA Tigers), who are looking to become the No. 1 player in KBO League hits and strikeouts this season, are moving forward.
Son has been showing off his formidable batting performance lately. In the three games from the match against the LG Twins in Changwon on Tuesday, he had 10 hits in 15 times at bat (0.667 batting average). His batting cycle seems to be on the rise in May, although his batting average was slightly poor at 0.271 (30 games, 35 hits in 129 times at bat) between March and April.
Son is also good at hitting once his batting performance increases. In 2017, when Son had the most 193 hits in a single season, he had 39 hits in 27 games in August. Last year, he became the first batting king of his career, showing off his strong batting performance. “When I become the batting king, I become more motivated (to achieve the record),” Son said at the time.
Attention is also focusing on Son’s ability to become the No. 1 hit in the KBO League. Son has added 10 hits in the recent three games to post 2,461 hits in total. He is only 43 hits shy of Park Yong-taek’s (2,504 hits), the No. 1 player in this category. He is highly likely to achieve it in the first half of this season, and it is worth aiming at achieving it as early as early as early June.
Yang is poised to break the overall strikeout record in the KBO League within this season. He started seven games this season and struck out 33 in 44.2 innings. Since the game against the Hanwha Eagles in Daejeon on April 13, he has recorded quality start (QS, pitching six innings or more and three earned runs or less) in four consecutive games, including one complete game, and during this period he tied for fourth with Kim Kwang-hyun (SSG Landers) in the strikeout category with 25. Yang, who currently has 1980 strikeouts in his personal total, is now 68 points closer to Song Jin-woo (2048), the top player in this category. As he often strikes out three-digit strikeouts every season, he is highly likely to achieve it within this season.
Prior to these two, Kang Min-ho (2,238 games, 2,269 games now) broke the KBO League record by playing against the LG Twins in Jamsil on March 28, shortly after the opening of this season. Kang also surpassed Park Yong-taek, who had previously held the record. After Kang Min-ho, Choi Jung (SSG) surpassed Lee Seung-yeop (current manager of Doosan Bears, 467 home runs), who was the previous No. 1 player in the KBO League home run category, against the Lotte Giants in Sajik on the 24th of last month.
BY: 토토사이트링크