KT Wiz announced on the 31st of last month, "We have completed salary contracts for the 2024 season with 64 of the 65 people subject to renewal, excluding outfielder Song Min-seop."
Without repeating the nightmare of this time last year, Kang signed an annual salary contract of 290 million won for the 2024 season, the same as the 2023 season. After playing in 71 games last year due to injury and slump, how could he sign a frozen salary contract.
Kang Baek-ho, who graduated from Seoul High School and was selected as the No. 1 player in the second round of KT in 2018, suffered a bitter taste of his first salary cut ahead of the 2023 season. Starting with 120 million won in the second year, he raised his annual salary to 550 million won in the fifth year after 210 million won in the third year and 310 million won in the fourth year, but he injured his toe and hamstring in the 2022 season, leaving only 245 with six homers and 29 RBIs in 62 games, resulting in a 47.3 percent cut to 290 million won.
The annual salary negotiation process was also bumpy. The team had difficulty narrowing differences with KT, and ran parallel until just before departure. Kang seemed to hardly understand the 47.3 percent figure. Eventually, Kang signed the contract only on the morning of Jan. 29, when the main camp of the spring camp is scheduled to depart. Two days later, he left for Tucson, Arizona, the U.S., where the spring camp will take place on Jan. 31.
Kang Baek-ho has regained his initial commitment and participated in the spring camp more motivated than ever before. However, various controversies have hindered his comeback. The 2023 WBC (World Baseball Classic), which took place in March last year, was the beginning of his misfortune. His so-called "ceremony company" caused public uproar in his first game against Australia, which was regarded as a watershed moment for his advance to the quarterfinals. After hitting a double, he was performing a ceremony while looking at the dugout at the third base in an in-play situation, when his foot fell off the second base for a moment, and he was out by a glove tag on the second baseman.
Kang disappointed baseball fans with another bonehead play just two months after the controversy over his performance in the ceremony. After catching Kim Hyun-soo's hit at first base with no outs in the bottom of the fifth inning of the game against LG in Jamsil on May 18, he provided an excuse to tie the game 3-3.
Eventually, he complained of extreme mental stress and fully rested without participating in games in June and August. Since then, he recovered his mind and made a comeback to the first division on Sept. 5, and marked the return of a genius hitter by hitting a monthly batting average of 333. Kang finally regained his smile as he won the much-anticipated gold medal heading to the Hangzhou Asian Games.
After recovering from mental illness, Kang dreamed of winning his second championship ring while preparing more passionately than any other player in the postseason. However, was he too motivated? In the team's own Cheongbaek match in preparation for the playoffs, he failed to play in the fall baseball due to damage to his right internal abdominal muscle during his swing. "I told him not to hit so hard," manager Lee Kang-cheol said at the time, expressing regret.
Kang's performance in the 2023 season was not much different from that of the 2022 season, when he recorded a batting average of 265 with eight homers and 39 RBIs and 32 runs scored with an OPS of .763. He recorded a batting average of 245 with six homers and 29 RBIs in 62 games, but KT did not cut Kang's annual salary any longer. Unlike last year, Kang also reportedly signed a contract early on, vowing to rebound in the 2024 season.
In a telephone conversation with OSEN, a KT source said, "We sent a message to (Kang) Baek-ho through his annual salary to urge him to rebound last year. However, in the case of last year, he had mental problems due to various external stresses rather than functional ones," adding, "Kang Baek-ho is a player that we should nurture as a star player. We decided that it would be more valuable to spend money by motivating him and building his self-esteem rather than further cuts."
Meanwhile, Park Young-hyun, who dominated the back door in the must-win group last season, posted both the highest rate of increase for KT's team and the highest amount of increase for KT's team at the same time. His annual salary increased by 162.3 percent from 61 million won (5.6 million U.S. dollars) last season, to 160 million won (6.37 million dollars).
Song Min-seop, the only non-contracted player among the 65 players, is said to have failed to narrow differences over his team's differences. Song Min-seop, a backup outfielder who turned 33 this year, posted a batting average of 1303 (3 hits in 23 times at bat) in 69 games as he took charge of defense and pinch runner in the 2023 season. 안전놀이터