The NC Dinos will start the 2025 season with the new manager Lee Ho-joon as the head coach. NC, which finished the season in ninth place last year, does not have much off-season power reinforcement. It can be said that it is rather negative because the contract with Kyle Hart, a foreign pitcher who won 15 games last year, was canceled.토토사이트
Pitchers are worried about rotation of starting pitchers in particular. We should expect new foreign pitchers Riley Thompson and Logan Allen to adapt well to the KBO league. Three to five starting pitchers have yet to be confirmed. Shin, who was the third starting pitcher last year, underwent surgery to remove bone fragments in his elbow in September last year. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to perform the rotation properly from the beginning of this season. Veteran Lee Jae-hak, Kim Young-gyu, Choi Sung-young, and Young-gun Shin Young-woo are among the candidates, but it is regrettable that he can use strong starting cards.
Coach Lee Ho-joon mentioned Koo Chang-mo, who is serving in the military at Sangmu, at the 2025 New Year's party held at the Olympic Memorial Hall of Masan Baseball Center on Sunday. Koo joined the Sangmu Baseball Team in December 2023 and will be discharged from the military in June this year.
Coach Lee Ho-joon said he had a New Year's greeting with Koo Chang-mo over the phone, adding, "If Koo Chang-mo remains in fifth place until I come back, I'll come back and make him No. 1."
Koo Chang-mo joined the military after playing as a native ace for NC. However, he is a "glass body." Since his debut, he has never met the regular innings and suffered many injuries.
Koo Chang-mo, who joined NC as the third-ranked player in the second round of the rookie draft in 2015, made his debut in 2016 and started and saved before establishing himself as a starting pitcher in 2019. In the 2019 season, he became a native ace with 10 wins, 7 losses and an ERA of 3.20 in 23 games (107 innings).
Koo Chang-mo played as the league's best pitcher with a one-run ERA in 2020, but suffered a fatigue fracture in his left forearm in July of that year. After rehabilitating for about two months, he returned at the end of the season and contributed to NC's first unified championship. His regular season record was 9 wins, 1 hold, and an ERA of 1.74 in 15 games (93 ⅓ innings).
He had some aftereffects of his winning the title. Ahead of the 2021 season, he had to rest for the entire season due to recurrence of fatigue fractures and injury. In 2022, he returned to the mound at 19 games (111 ⅔ innings) and played 11 wins, 5 losses and an earned run average of 2.10.
In 2023, Koo suffered another ulnar injury in the forearm. In June, he was diagnosed with a fatigue fracture in the forearm and went into rehabilitation. He hurriedly returned to the first team to compete in the Hangzhou Asian Games, but was eventually eliminated from the final entry due to an injury. Since then, the injury has recurred again and he will undergo surgery in October. He then joined the Sangmu team in December.
After rehabilitation for a year, Koo took the mound in the Futures League in September last year. He allowed three hits, one walk, and one strikeout in two innings in two games. He needs to increase the number of innings he throws at Sangmu for two months from April to May this year. He needs to develop physical stamina to play in a five-day rotation as a starting pitcher and build a durable body without injury.
NC signed a multi-year contract with Koo Chang-mo after the 2022 season. At that time, two versions of the contract were set up depending on the timing of Koo's acquisition of the FA, and as Koo Chang-mo did not qualify as an FA and went to the military, a maximum of 13.2 billion won was signed, including incentives and execution of the 7th-year contract for 8.8 billion won in guaranteed annual salary for 6+1 years and 6 years from 2023 to 2029 season.