Will there be another tragedy like this? Manager Larry Sutton (53), who led Lotte this season, finally puts down the baton. Coach Sutton went to work at the stadium on the 27th to lead the match against KT at Sajik Stadium, but was absent due to body aches and dizziness. Lotte has entrusted the temporary baton to head coach Lee Jong-woon. Sutton, who went back to his home and took a break, announced his intention to resign to the club after the game, and Lotte decided to accept it after careful consideration until the morning of the 28th.
This isn't the first time Sutton has missed a game. In the match against Sajik SSG on the 17th, he was unable to command the match due to dizziness. Even though he went to the hospital in the morning, he went to work and had a briefing session with reporters before the game, but had to leave the stadium as his condition worsened. Lotte said on the 28th, “Director Sutton expressed his appreciation for the managerial position due to health reasons.” There was no law that this would not happen again in the future, as manager Sutton had already missed the game twice due to health reasons. What's the use if there is no command tower to lead the players going to 'war'? A Lotte official also said, "Director Sutton expressed his intention that he did not want to cause any further inconvenience to the team."
Fortunately, this time it wasn't serious enough to go to the hospital. Director Sutton is expected to organize his personal affairs soon and go on his way to the country. Currently, all of his family members have also entered Korea and are staying together. No date has been set yet. Lotte plans to continue the remainder of the season by entrusting head coach Lee Jong-woon as acting coach from the Daejeon Hanwha match on the 29th. It was in 2005, when Sutton was a player, that he first made contact with Korea. Hyundai, which has now disappeared into history, was a team with a good reputation for scouting foreign players. In 2004, when Cliff Brumba exploded with a batting average of .343, 33 home runs and 105 RBIs and advanced to the Japanese stage, Hyundai tried to fill the gap by recruiting Sutton as a new foreign hitter. After all, modern eyes were accurate. In the 2005 season, Sutton recorded a batting average of .292, 35 home runs, and 102 RBIs, creating a blue sky to become the home run king.
Of course, the contract was also renewed. However, Sutton only had a batting average of .266 with 18 homers and 61 RBIs in 2006, and had a chance at the KIA in 2007, but had to leave Korea with a batting average of .274 with 3 homers and 10 RBIs. Sutton, who was already in his late 30s at the time of playing in Korea, walked the path of a leader and made a connection with Korea again when he was appointed as Lotte 2nd team coach at the time of the 2020 season. And in May 2021, when manager Heo Mun-hoe stepped down, he took over as first-team manager. Coach Sutton often said, "I want to create a championship culture in Lotte." It meant not only taking the absolute goal of winning, but also creating a strong and sustainable team. However, Sutton's wishes did not come true.
Last year, when Sutton's first full-time season of 144 games was played, Lotte stayed in 8th place. As ‘Legend’ Dae-ho Lee retired, his sense of crisis heightened. However, Lotte made an aggressive investment by investing a total of 17 billion won in the three free agents, including Yoo Gang-nam, Noh Jin-hyuk, and Han Hyun-hee. In fact, Lotte finished the race in April with a sole first place and made the league atmosphere hot by forming a top-three composition with LG and SSG while running a 9-game winning streak. In the game against Sajik KIA on June 3, Noh Jin-hyeok's ending hit broke out, and the win-loss margin peaked at +11.
However, after that, Lotte fell sharply. He made up for the poor power of the lineup with his concentration in scoring situations, but this had its limits. 안전놀이터 Now that the team is in the process of gradually increasing the depth, coping with the line injuries of the main players was also insufficient. Injuries and sluggishness of foreign players also overlapped. However, it was not a team that overcomes with mercenary skills on the bench. The growth of young players who will lead Lotte in the future, such as Na Kyun-an, Kim Min-seok, and Yoon Dong-hee, was welcome, but the sluggishness of Han Dong-hee, who was in the limelight as the successor of Lee Dae-ho, caused the sluggishness of Lotte's batting line.
Lotte, who finished the first half with a win-loss margin of -1, raised the number of wins by using all two foreign player replacement cards ahead of the second half. He burned his will to fall baseball, but after that, Lotte had to face the ordeal of 7 consecutive losses. In the game against Gocheok Kiwoom on the 18th, Lotte continued the typical 'winning baseball' pace, leading 4-2 until the beginning of the 8th inning, but at the end of the 8th, Han Hyun-hee hit a come-from-behind 3-run home run by Lee Joo-hyung, resulting in a shocking 4-5 come-from-behind defeat. In the end, Lotte could not escape from the shock of the reverse defeat and suffered a sweep defeat to Kiwoom, which stayed at the bottom, as well as losing 2 consecutive losses to leading LG and losing all 3 consecutive games to 'August's strongest' KT, widening the gap with 5th place KIA by 5 games. The nightmare could not be avoided. The successive performance sluggishness had no choice but to come as a tremendous stress to the command tower.
However, Lotte's 2023 season is not over yet. Lotte still has 36 games left. Now, Lotte is starting anew with the acting manager Lee Jong-woon. Acting manager Lee Jong-woon has a career in leading the team as Lotte Command Tower in 2015. Ahead of this season, he made a comeback to Lotte as a second-team coach and served as the first-team head coach from last June. It is necessary to change from the team atmosphere that can be confusing. It is by no means a step to give up. Of course, there are a lot of games left, but it's never a position where you can afford it. In September, Na Kyun-an and Park Se-woong, the main pitchers of the starting pitching staff, will be selected as the national team for the Hangzhou Asian Games, so they need to rebound as quickly as possible. The Asian Games team will convene at the end of September. Of course, other teams are equally selected, but the blow to Lotte, where two starting pitchers are missing at once, is inevitable.
There are certainly positive elements that can rebound again. Currently, Aaron Wilkerson and Charlie Barnes are firmly guarding the mound with foreign one-two punches, and Pil Seung-jo is also maintaining a stable posture with finishing pitcher Won-joong Kim, Seung-min Koo, Jun-yong Choi, and Sang-soo Kim. In fact, the problem is that there is a big gap between the pitchers who are in the winning group and the pitchers who are not in the winning group, but they have a clear winning formula. In the batting line, Nico Goodrum, who has '0 home runs', has a problem with a hamstring injury. There is a need. Will Lotte be able to quickly settle the mood and succeed in rebounding? The fateful September is approaching.