“We are not at the stage where we can make a decision. There are no specific discussions yet. The CEO and former coach Kim Tae-hyung have never met.”

Will ‘Rot Taehyung’s’ dream come true? It’s still too early. This is not true at this point.

A high-ranking Lotte official told Sports Chosun on the 16th, “We have not had any specific discussions (with former coach Kim) yet.”

On this day, one media outlet reported, ‘Lotte is coordinating detailed conditions after reaching an agreement in principle with former coach Kim.’

The Lotte team’s response to this is, in one word, ‘absurd.’ Each person involved either jumped or flatly denied it, saying, “It’s not true. Nothing has progressed.”메이저사이트

Former coach Kim is a veteran player who has advanced to the Korean Series seven times in a row and won the championship three times. After saying goodbye to Doosan at the end of last year, he served as a commentator this season. It is true that he is one of the important candidates that Lotte wants to recruit as the new head coach.

However, in order for a new head coach to be decided, permission from Lotte Club CEO (President Lee Kang-hoon) is first needed. Next, approval from the group must be obtained at the club level.

According to Lotte’s explanation, they only ‘met on and off’ with former manager Kim on a personal level. Let alone a contract agreement, there has yet to be a meeting with the club’s CEO. It is also not the stage to request approval from Lotte Holdings, the parent company. Internal discussions are not over yet.

Until this year, former coach Larry Sutton was under contract. Former coach Sutton, who first joined Lotte in 2020, was promoted to the first team the following year when former coach Heo Moon-hoe was fired, and later extended his contract until this year.

His dream was big. The goal before the season was to advance to the Korean Series. It started well. We ended April with 14 wins and 8 losses, in first place overall. As of early May, they had achieved 9 consecutive wins for the first time in 5358 days (approximately 14 years and 8 months). Until early June, they were in the top three with SSG Landers and LG Twins.

But it collapsed rapidly. Injuries continued, and the first half ended with a score of less than .500 (38 wins, 39 losses, 5th place) amid repeated two-stroke imbalances. Two foreign players were replaced, but they ultimately failed to make it to the fall stage.

Former coach Sutton resigned in August due to health issues. Afterwards, his baton was passed to acting director Jong-woon Lee. Acting manager Lee took over as head coach of the Futures (2nd team) ahead of the opening of this season, and had just been promoted to 1st team head coach during the club’s coaching staff reshuffle last June. Coach Bae Young-soo, who was the 1st team pitching coach at the time, has moved down to the 2nd team and is now in charge of Futures.

Lotte went through a dark period in the mid-2000s called password 8888577. During the ‘Royster system’ from 2008 to 2012 (Royster – former coach Yang Seung-ho), the team advanced to fall baseball for five consecutive years, but reached the postseason only once over the next 11 years.

In 2017, Dae-ho Lee’s return season, he entered the fall baseball league with a 3rd place finish in the regular season and was eliminated in the semi-playoffs. Since then, they have failed to advance to the postseason for six consecutive years.

The highest ranking during this period was 7th, recorded three times. Ahead of this season, the team received large-scale investment from the parent company and succeeded in recruiting three free agents (Yoo Kang-nam, Noh Jin-hyuk, and Han Hyun-hee) with 17 billion won and ace Park Se-woong’s contract extension (5 years, up to 9 billion won), but failed to advance to the postseason this year as well.

Therefore, the Lotte team is even more embarrassed about this ‘Lotte type’ theory. This is because they are afraid that the first step in rebuilding the club, recruiting a new head coach, will go wrong.