After a seasonlong struggle to get his bat going, Lotte Giants third baseman Han Dong-hui was demoted to the minor leagues this week.
And his manager, Larry Sutton, doesn’t plan on recalling the 24-year-old anytime soon.
Long anointed the next big thing for the Giants, Han carried a meager .217 batting average with only four home runs in 77 games through the weekend. Far more was expected of the young slugger who batted a career-high .307 last year with 14 homers and 65 RBIs. In each of the two seasons prior to that, Han had 17 home runs.
So what has gone wrong for Han this year? Sutton said Tuesday he believed it was mostly between Han’s ears.
“There could be a lot of variables that go into it, where once hitters start cycling down a little bit, a lot of them try to do more rather than do less,” Sutton said in his pregame media scrum before taking on the Kiwoom Heroes at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. “Doing less is better because it helps simplify your mental thoughts.”
In the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), a player sent down to the minors must spend a minimum of 10 days. Sutton said he likely won’t bring Han back up to the big club once his 10 days are up and that there is no timetable for the player’s return.
“He really needs some time to just get his mental mind down and continue to work on the things he needs to work on,” Sutton said. “Time will tell.”
Specifically, Sutton said he wants Han, who bats right-handed, to start driving the ball the other way more often, instead of trying to pull everything. Sutton also called on Han to separate his offense and defense, so that he could still be effective at third base when he has issues at the plate.
Sutton added that he believed Han might have been putting too much pressure on himself, especially since he was being seen as heir apparent to the retired Giants slugger Lee Dae-ho, one of the most complete hitters in his days in the KBO.
“Just to be clear: we weren’t asking him to be the next Lee Dae-ho,” Sutton said. “We wanted him to be the best Han Dong-hui. But I know there are comparisons out there, and a lot of times, people are going to read what they read and think what they think.”
After a hot start to this season, the Giants have fallen on some hard times of late. They came into Tuesday’s game in seventh place at 43-49, 4.5 games out of the fifth and final playoff spot, with 52 games remaining.
They were 27-17 at the end of May. But since June 1, the Giants have gone 16-32, the worst record in the KBO in that span.
Source: Yonhap News Agency