“I will do my best to repay you with the victory so that the opponent of my first win is Samsung.”
Kim Do-young (21), the scariest batter in the KIA Tigers this year, expressed his strong ambition to lead the team to victory on the first stage of the Korean Series. Kim Do-young attended the “2024 Shinhan SOL Bank KBO Postseason Korean Series Media Day” held at the Ramada Plaza Chungjang Hotel in Gwangju on the 20th and vowed to win the team’s 12th championship trophy ever.
After graduating from Gwangju Dongseong High School, Kim joined Kia as the first designated shortstop in 2022, drawing high expectations as a five-tool player. He was nicknamed “Little Lee Jong-beom,” as he was fast and had outstanding contact skills. Until last year, when he was in his second year as a pro, however, he had to go through trials and errors to realize that he is a professional. Last year, when he seemed to have awakened to baseball a little, he had to swallow his regret as he could only play 84 games due to injury.
In his third year as a pro player, Kim was in full bloom this year. He had the best season of his career with a batting average of 0.347 (189 hits in 544 times at bat), 38 homers, 40 steals, 109 RBIs, 143 points, and 1.067 OPS in 141 games. He has achieved tremendous strides by ranking first in scores, third in batting average and hits, second in homers, sixth in stolen bases, and seventh in RBIs. He became a record breaker at a young age of 21 with 30 homers and 30 steals, the youngest in history, and the youngest in a single season with 100 RBIs and 100 runs scored. Some people say that Kim is responsible for the MVP of the regular season.
Kim Do-young said, “This Korean series is actually her debut stage in fall. In 2022, the first year of joining the team, KIA was ranked fifth in the wild card final, and I felt the air of the postseason, but Kim Do-young did not have a chance to play.
Attention is drawn to whether Kim Do-young will make another accident on the first fall stage. If Kim Do-young leads her team to victory with a strong performance on the Korean Series stage, she may become a player who wins both the regular season MVP and the Korean Series MVP this year.
In the 43-year history of the KBO, only one player has been named MVP of both the regular season and the Korean Series. He is Kia left-hander ace Yang Hyeon-jong, who is called the “great pitcher.” Yang won the MVP award of the regular season in 2017, when he was 29 years old, with 31 games, 20-6, 193 ⅓ innings, 158 strikeouts, and an earned run average of 3.44. In the Korean Series, Yang won the MVP in two games with one win, one save, 10 innings, and an earned run average of 0.00.
During the 2017 Korean Series, Yang started the second game and led his team to a 1-0 victory by allowing four hits, two outs and 11 strikeouts in nine innings. KIA, which gave up the first game to the opposing Doosan Bears, balanced the game with one win and one loss, and continued its momentum to win four consecutive games to lift the team’s 11th championship trophy. Yang took the mound as a pitcher in Game 5, which confirmed the victory, and kept the win 7-6 by making a scoreless save in one inning. It has been such a dramatic year that he had no choice but to win the first and only unified MVP in KBO history.
Will Kim be able to become the second MVP in KBO history after Yang Hyun-jong? “If I enter the Korean Series, I will use my strength to target the opponent,” he said. “I don’t have much greed for a unified MVP. If I do what I have to do, I think I will have a chance.” 토토사이트
It is nice to see that the opponent team that will compete for the championship is Samsung. Kim Do-young showed a strong performance against Samsung this year with a batting average of 0.305 (18 hits in 59 at-bats), five homers, 14 walks and nine RBIs in 16 games. On April 5, he hit his last home run (38th) this year against Samsung, and surpassed 136 points on the day, setting a new record for the most goals scored in a single season in KBO history.
Kim Do-young was asked what kind of record he would like to have against Samsung in the Korean Series. “All records are honored against any club, but I will do my best to repay the record of my first win with a victory,” he said confidently.
KIA teams have traditionally been full of confidence in the Korean Series. In the history of the team, the team has never been the runner-up in the Korean Series. Throughout 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2009 and 2017, Kia entered the Korean Series 11 times and won 11 times, displaying a 100 percent chance of winning the title. Kia is committed to keeping a 100 percent chance of winning the 12th Korean Series this year.
“I ran without any pressure during the regular season. Now, I will try to contribute to the team by winning the title, thinking that I am honored by my spirit at a young age,” Kim said.