The goal is to stay with everyone.

The FA market is busy again. After three weeks of absence, the contract suddenly poured out on Monday. The LG Twins signed a four-year contract with Lim Chan-kyu worth 5 billion won (600 million won down payment, 2 billion won annual salary, 2.4 billion won incentive, and Oh Ji-hwan also signed a six-year, 12.4 billion won FA contract. Hanwha Eagles also secured internal FA Jang Min-jae for 2+1 years at 800 million won.

However, the Samsung Lions, which has only three internal FA players, has yet to announce the contract signing yet. On April 22, Samsung signed a four-year contract worth 5.8 billion won (down payment of 2 billion won, annual salary of 2.8 billion won, incentive total of 1 billion won with bullpen pitcher Kim Jae-yoon, and quickly recruited external FA players. Kim Jae-yoon is a league-class closure player with 169 saves in his professional career. Samsung, which desperately needed to reinforce its bullpen, succeeded in recruiting Kim Jae-yoon, but since then, it has made no additional reinforcement and has yet to sign a contract with an internal FA.

Three of Samsung’s internal free agents are Oh Seung-hwan, a living legend of Korean baseball, Kim Dae-woo, a veteran bullpen pitcher, and Kang Han-ul, an infield utility. Samsung is negotiating with all of them, but has yet to narrow differences between teams and players.

A Samsung official who contacted Spotify News on Monday said, We are constantly talking with Oh Seung-hwan. The same applies to Kim Dae-woo. Kang Han-ul is also negotiating. His goal is to stay with all players. The more players we have, the better, adding, We are trying to retain all of our internal FA players.

Oh is indeed a must-have player. Oh is a star player of the Samsung Lions who became the first Korean pro baseball player to set the 400-save golden crown. Despite his young age, Oh has maintained top-notch skills through thorough self-management. This year, he maintained his back door to Samsung by recording four wins, five losses, 30 saves and an ERA of 3.45 in 58 games. Oh ranked third in the save category and boasted his robustness.

Kim Dae-woo also played well in the bullpen this season. He played 64 innings in 44 games and posted an ERA of 4.50 with two losses and four holds. When a starting pitcher was injured, Kim was deployed as a temporary starter to extinguish an urgent fire. In fact, he served as a yardstick for the Samsung mound.

Kang is well-known as Park Jin-man’s man. Last year, when Park Jin-man took the helm as an acting coach, Kang was the biggest hitter at Samsung. He performed his duties as a cleanup hitter perfectly, and served as an infield utility, giving a boost to Samsung. However, he struggled amid ups and downs this year. Kang had a batting average of 0.217 (46 hits in 212 at-bats and an on-base percentage of 0.282 with a slugging percentage of 0.269 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage of 0.551.

In fact, Samsung’s infield is saturated. Ryu Ji-hyuk plays defense by moving from place to place in Samsung’s infield where first baseman Oh Jae-il, second baseman Kim Ji-chan and shortstop Lee Jae-hyun are fixed. On top of that, foreign hitter David McKinnon is also an infielder who can play at first and third bases. Already, the infield can be filled with existing resources. Kim Young-woong, Kim Jae-sang, and Lee Sung-kyu will support them. Nevertheless, Samsung says it needs strong players. The more players there are, the better.

For now, Samsung plans to continue negotiations with the internal FA. Attention is focusing on whether the crackdown will succeed. 스포츠중계