The 2023 KBO season ended with an emotional championship for the LG Twins, the first in 29 years. Now, attention turns to the free agency market and the Golden Globe Awards.
The Golden Globe Awards are held in early December. This is the most coveted individual award for players. This honor goes to the best player in each position. Early on, there’s a lot of talk about which players are the favorites for each position.
The shortstop category is particularly interesting. In fact, until the postseason, the odds were in favor of Chan Ho Park of the KIA Tigers. Park had a breakout season as KIA’s top hitter. He hit 136 home runs in 507 at-bats in 130 games, breaking triple digits for the first time in his career. His final batting average was 3.1. He also stole 30 bases. He also had 52 RBIs. A 3-for-30 shortstop who also plays good defense is not a character that comes along very often.
But LG wrote the drama of the Korean Series, and Oh was at the center of it. He hit three game-winning home runs in the Korean Series and won the MVP award. He has been a “bully” since he was a child, playing as LG’s main shortstop, 카지노사이트 but the story of his transformation into a mature “captain” who is good at baseball has touched the hearts of many fans.
However, his regular season performance was a bit lacking.
In 126 games, he batted 2-for-6 with eight home runs, 65 RBIs, and 16 stolen bases. That’s not to say he’s not good, but it’s hard to compare him to Chan Ho Park. If he were to become the first shortstop to hit 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in a season like last season, he would be 99.9% certain to win the title.
In the end, it’s going to come down to which side of the fence the media members vote on. Technically, the Golden Glove is a regular-season award, with nominations based on regular-season performance. In recent years, a number of equity concerns have led to a significant loosening of the nomination criteria, opening the door for many players, but before that, the requirements were tough. In 2016, the shortstop position, for example, only players with a batting average of 2.8 or higher were eligible. Only the best players were nominated based on their regular season performance.
However, the variable with the Golden Globe Awards is that voting takes place after the postseason.
This favors players who have a strong team performance in addition to their individual performance, or who impress in big games. There’s nothing to say that postseason performance and results shouldn’t be factored into the voting. You could argue that it’s unfair to players who didn’t make it to the postseason, but it’s hard to argue with that if it wasn’t their performance that got their team into fall baseball. In fact, in the 2016 shortstop competition mentioned above, Oh Ji-hwan and Kim Ha-seong (then Nexen) hit 20 home runs, but they were beaten out by Kim Jae-ho (Doosan), who had a 3.01 batting average and a premium.
Park Chan-ho, who had the season of his life, and Oh Ji-hwan, who became an emotional championship MVP captain. Who will have the laughs in the Golden Glove race.