Doosan batting woeful in ‘lowest run-rate’… Rojas back to be savior
It’s time to pierce the veins of a stifling batting lineup.
The Korean baseball team Doosan hasn’t had much luck with foreign hitters this season. The performance of Jose Rojas (30), who made his KBO debut with high hopes, has been disappointing. This is in stark contrast to LG and SSG, who have been cruising through the season, benefiting from the superlatives of Austin Dean and Guillermo Heredia, respectively.
Rojas is the worst performing outfielder this year outside of Brian O’Grady (Hanwha), who has already been hit with the release mace. He’s played in 50 of Doosan’s 64 games (45 starts) and has 176 plate appearances. He hit .204 with 10 home runs and 26 RBIs.
He has power, but lacks precision and consistency. To put it bluntly, he can’t be a constant in the lineup. He’s especially bad against lefties, hitting .069 (2-for-29). For an outfielder who needs to play as many games as possible, having a clear weakness is devastating.
That’s why the team removed him from the first-team roster on Nov. 11: He couldn’t even get his swing going at the plate under the pressure of his poor performance. Manager Lee Seung-yeop decided he had time to work on it in the second team.
The Doosan batting lineup lost even more energy. The center field lineup (3-5) is batting .257, which ranks ninth in the league. Their batting average with runners in scoring position is also abysmal at 0.227 (9th). In June, after Rojas’ departure, they barely hit in the double digits at .208 (10th). The team ranks last in runs scored and RBI on the season with 257 and 233 respectively. They even suffered the humiliation of failing to score a single run in five bases-loaded chances in the Jamsil home series against SSG on the 20th and 21st.
In the end, Lee decided to call up Rojas on the 22nd. The manager said, “I received a report from the second team that he was ready from the 21st. I was expecting right-handed pitchers from the three-game weekend series (in Kiwoom), so I was going to call him up tomorrow (the 23rd), but the batting lineup was so stagnant that I called him up a day early to use a substitute.” However, he failed to live up to expectations and hit a foul fly in his first at-bat.메이저사이트
Still, he has to be a savior. As a foreign batsman who is half the team’s strength, he has a lot on his shoulders. “From the 23rd, of course, he will start,” Lee said. If a foreign player doesn’t start, it’s meaningless,” Lee said. It’s a statement that shows that he wants Rojas to be responsible.