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Hope is becoming increasingly scarce, and people are leaving one after another. Fall baseball is rapidly fading away.

The Hanwha Eagles game in Daejeon on the 20th was canceled due to rain. However, the Lotte Giants faced a new power vacuum.스포츠토토

Lotte has already lost veteran Pil Seung-joo, Koo Seung-min and Kim Sang-soo. This time, even ‘Captain’ Ahn Chi-hong and Young-geon Jin Seung-hyeon were expunged from the first team.

Lotte said, “Ahn Chi-hong had severe symptoms of cold, and Jin Seung-hyun had a strain on his shoulder. Both players were excluded to protect the players.” Instead, infielder Kim Min-soo and pitcher Kim Do-gyu were registered in the first team.

The glory of +10 win-loss margin (27 wins, 17 losses) in April and May has long been forgotten. They have not recovered their momentum since falling to 14 wins and 28 losses in June and July. Since dropping to 7th place at the end of June, the season is coming to an end without being able to move up. At the end of August, former coach Larry Sutton also voluntarily resigned due to health reasons. Acting manager Lee Jong-woon is leading the team, but the situation is getting worse.

Kim Sang-soo (adductor rupture) and Koo Seung-min (shoulder pain), who ranked 1st and 2nd in the team this season in number of appearances, holds, and relief innings (excluding closer Kim Won-jung), were subsequently expunged from the first team. In the bullpen that they were missing, even Jin Seung-hyeon, who had been an all-weather sure-win team along with Choi Jun-yong, was out due to injury.

Ahn Chi-hong’s departure is an even bigger blow. With Lee Dae-ho retiring and Han Dong-hee, Yoo Kang-nam, and Noh Jin-hyuk underperforming, Lotte’s batting lineup gained strength thanks to the consistent performance of Jeon Jun-woo and Ahn Chi-hong.

Among the batters who filled the required at-bats this year, Ahn Chi-hong had the team’s batting average (.209 4/4), home runs (8), RBI (62), hits (121), slugging percentage (.404), and OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage, 0.783). He solidified his position as the second best player on the team in terms of overall batting. His on-base percentage (0.379) was ahead of Jeon Jun-woo (0.369).

Even Jeong Jeong-geun, who exploded last summer and energized the batting lineup, suffered a hamstring injury while running on the base on the 17th, making it difficult for him to play for the remainder of the season. Yoo Kang-nam is showing signs of strength in September, but the weight of the batting lineup, which was once light, seems to be dropping as he ranks last in home runs and 8th in RBI and OPS.

As of the 20th, they are 58 wins and 65 losses, 5 and a half games behind SSG Landers in 5th place. There are only 21 games left in Lotte’s regular season.

SSG (2 wins, 7 losses, 1 draw) has caught up with the faltering KIA Tigers (3 wins, 7 losses) by recording 5 wins and 5 losses in the last 10 games, but there is still a long way to go. The fighting spirit of dreaming of a miraculous turnaround and shouting “It’s not over yet” is admirable, but now the time has come to conserve strength for the next season.