NC Dinos Son Ah-seop is greedy for long hits again. After spending the worst season that was not suitable for his career, he found a breakthrough after worrying and researching.
Everyone admires Son A-seop’s passion for learning about hitting. As much as he is, he is greedy when it comes to hitting, and even though he had the best season by anyone’s eyes, he explores what his weaknesses are and tries to make up for them. The result of that passion for learning was a total of 2229 hits.
He is currently recording the highest number of hits and is third in the all-time rankings after Park Yong-taek (2504) and Yang Jun-hyeok (2318). There are 276 hits left to break Park Yong-taek’s record for most hits. He has more than 140 hits every year since 2011, so he could hit the record within two seasons, or as early as the first half of 2024.
However, the time to achieve the new record could have been a little longer. Son Ah-seop, who signed a four-year, 6.4 billion won contract with NC after leaving Lotte, his hometown team, after earning his second free agent (FA) qualification last year. However, in the first season of his transfer, he suffered a shocking slump. It was the worst season of my full-time career. In 138 games, he had a batting average of 2.7 7 (152 hits in 548 bats), 4 homers, 46 RBIs, 72 runs scored and an OPS of .714.
His simple OPS number is the lowest since 2012 (.766). The wRC+ (adjusted scoring productivity), which includes corrections by era, was the lowest since 2010 when he played full-time.
I had a season that was not like Son Ah-seop, where contact, on-base, and long hits were not easy. Son Ah-seop said, “I had a feeling that I couldn’t grow, and I wanted to go higher, but I felt like I was blocked by a wall. Last year was the deciding factor. There are still many days left in my career as a player, but I felt a sense of crisis that I might quit without being able to achieve my dreams and goals.” Then, as soon as the New Year 2023 dawned, he left for the United States.
And the person he visited was ‘Drunk Driving Episode 3’, which caused a great social controversy, but it was Kang Jung-ho, who was one of the best batting talents of all time. Kang Jung-ho, who is taking lessons in Los Angeles, USA, and Heo Il, who was close friends during his Lotte days and is currently receiving coaching training at the NCAA in American college baseball, put their heads together.
Together with them, Son A-seop made extensive technical changes. “The movement of the lower body has changed a lot, and the position of the hand before hitting is also higher than before. And in the past, being able to cover a large area of the strike zone was my forte. If there were 8-9 correct points in the past, now there are only 2-3. So if the pitcher didn’t throw a misfire, it wasn’t easy for him to hit.”
In the end, he couldn’t gather power properly and deliver power to the hit, so he lost his long hitting power as well as his strong point, contact스포츠토토. He corrected this and started the process of sending the batted ball stronger and farther. I picked up the long hitting power greed that I had put down for a while.
In fact, Son A-seop’s long hitting power was a complex throughout his career. In the early 2010s, he showed the league’s best contact ability, but he wasn’t satisfied with his slugging power. His expectations were high. In the end, however, Son A-seop overcame his long-running complex by hitting 20 home runs in 2017 and 26 home runs in 2018.
Then he missed long hits with 3 in 2021 and 4 in 2022. His slugging percentage also dropped to the 30% range. Considering his career slugging percentage of .459, it was infinitely insufficient. In the end, he chose the direction of finding Jang-ta, who had been missing as a breakthrough.
However, his excessive greed for long hits was sometimes the reason for a slump. During Son Ah-seop’s career, there was no end to his concerns and research on the enhancement of his long hitting power and contact. Either he found a new solution or he regressed to his old ways. The history of Son Ah-seop’s career repeated like this.
It is uncertain whether he will be able to hit 20 home runs like in the past. However, if the home run and double figures increase at the same time, the NC can make up for the slugging power figures that Yang Eui-ji (Doosan) and Roh Jin-hyuk (Lotte) were missing. Will Son A-seop’s change lead to a new career high season that will forget the shocking first season of the transfer?