During the Lunar New Year holiday, the controversy over Choo Shin-soo’s remarks that shook the baseball world does not subside.
On the 21st (local time), Choo Shin-soo appeared on a Korean radio in the Dallas area, USA, and made a statement about the selection of the Korean baseball team.
One of the controversies was the part about the generation change of the WBC national team announced on the 4th.
Choo Shin-soo said, “If you look at Japan alone, there are many new faces when you play international competitions. Kim Hyun-soo (35, LG) is a really good player, but if it were me, I would have seen the future. “There should have been more players who should have been selected,” he said. “How long will Kim Gwang-hyun (34, SSG) and Yang Hyeon-jong (34, KIA)? It’s not that these players lack skills. There are an enormous number of talented players among young players. The emotions and mindset itself are different. It is the job of Korean baseball to create opportunities to go abroad and things to do in Korean baseball after returning home,” he said, referring to Moon Dong-ju (19, Hanwha) and Ahn Woo-jin (24, Kiwoom).
Regarding Moon Dong-ju, he said, “There is no pitcher who throws as much as he does.” Regarding Ahn Woo-jin, he regretted not selecting him, saying, “A player with the talent to become a good player next to Park Chan-ho.”
However, there is something that Choo Shin-soo overlooked.
The Korean national team did not only select veterans such as Kim Gwang-hyun and Yang Hyeon-jong.
Young pitchers also picked up a lot. Woojin Ahn and Dongju Moon were not selected, but Wooyoung Jung (24), Yunsik Kim (23, LG Lee), Bin Gwak (24), Cheolwon Jeong (24, Doosan), Taein Won (23, Samsung), Joon Sohn (22, KT), Uiri Lee (21, KIA) and other young guns under the age of 25 account for nearly half of the 15 pitching entries.
In other words, we selected as many young pitchers as possible who can play in international competitions. Moon Dong-ju, a rookie last year, has infinite possibilities, but he failed to select the final entry due to his lack of experience in that 13 games in the 1st team stage are all.
Golden Globe winner Ahn Woo-jin was excluded for a completely different reason from Moon Dong-ju. If there was no issue of school violence, he is a player who would have been selected. In the end, Ahn Woo-jin was the only one missing among the young pitchers who deserved to be on the national team. 메이저사이트
Japan, where Choo Shin-soo claims to have “a lot of new faces,” is not just a selection of young players.
In the domestic league, the best pitchers were selected regardless of age as young guns made great progress as top pitchers.
Pitchers born in the 2000s, such as Roki Sasaki (21, Chiba Lotte), Hiroto Takahashi (20, Chunichi), Shousei Dogo (Yomiuri), Yuki Udagawa (20, Orix), and Hiroya Miyagi (21, Orix), showed league-class skills. verified players.
On the other hand, there are veteran pitchers with long national team careers, such as Darvish Yu (36, San Diego). It’s like you can’t say, “Is it Kim Kwang-hyun again?”
The difference between Korea and Japan lies in the growth rate of young players. As Choo Shin-soo claims, there are many “talented players” in the KBO, but there are not so many “completed players” yet. The national team is the stage where the completed players must go out.
The WBC, a national competition with the strongest power. Regardless of age, it is natural to build a team with the best baseball players. The “experience of young players” that Choo Shin-soo claims is only a result. Do not confuse goals and outcomes.
Korean baseball is getting smaller and smaller. What will happen if the strongest competing team loses in this international competition? If only young players are selected to compete in the Asian Games, and if they are eliminated in the preliminaries, who will be responsible for that?
Criticism that does not set foot in reality is just an empty echo.