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\u25b2 Lotte’s Han Dong-hee faces ongoing struggles in his comeback season, despite high expectations \u24d2 Lotte Giants<\/p>\nTranslation result \u25b2 Lotte’s Han Dong-hee faces ongoing struggles in his comeback season, despite high expectations \u24d2 Lotte Giants<\/p>\n
[SPOTV News=Reporter Kim Tae-woo] Lotte manager Kim Tae-hyung made a decisive move from the dugout in the fifth inning of the April 25 game against KIA at Gwangju Kia Champions Field. He pulled starting third baseman Han Dong-hee (27) and sent Park Seung-wook in to play third.<\/p>\n
The game had looked winnable for Lotte. After a KIA error in the third allowed Lotte to escape the inning and take a 2-0 lead, they gave up a run in the same frame but added another on Yoo Kang-nam\u2019s solo homer in the fourth to go up 3-1. Coming off a loss on the 24th, Lotte needed a win, and the coaching staff opted to tighten the defense. Han showed no obvious physical issue.<\/p>\n
One play in the third may have lingered in the coaches’ minds. With Lotte up 2-0 and one out, Dale singled to center. After the second out, facing Kim Sun-bin, the bench shifted the defense in and told Han to play closer to the line. With two outs, the priority was to prevent extra-base hits even if it meant conceding a single.<\/p>\n
At first it looked like the strategy would work. Kim Sun-bin ripped a ball toward third along the left-field foul line\u2014exactly the kind of play the moved-in third baseman could handle. Han failed to corral it and the hit rolled into a double. Dale, who had already broken on contact, rounded third and scored.<\/p>\n
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\u25b2 Han Dong-hee being replaced during the fifth-inning defensive substitution in the April 25 Gwangju KIA game \u24d2 Kwak Hye-mi<\/p>\n
That defensive change ultimately didn\u2019t derail KIA\u2019s rally. Park Jae-hyun followed with an RBI double that dropped to the left of the left fielder. After Dale\u2019s sacrifice bunt, Kim Ho-ryung hit a grounder to third and Kim Sun-bin drew a walk. Kim Do-young then cleared the right fielder\u2019s head with a two-run double to put KIA ahead. That sequence had little to do with the third-base spot. Lotte gave up three runs in the fifth and couldn\u2019t recover, falling 3-4.<\/p>\n
Still, the substitution underscored Han\u2019s struggles this season. He entered the year with high expectations but has underwhelmed on both sides of the ball. Being pulled in the fifth inning\u2014essentially the middle of the game\u2014sends a message about the coaching staff\u2019s current confidence in his defense. His defensive metrics this year sit below the league average for third basemen.<\/p>\n
Han has long had a tendency to make defensive mistakes. The expectation was that he would clean those up while contributing at the plate; so far this year, he hasn\u2019t done that. After a mid-2024 stint with the military club Sangmu and a dominant return in the Futures League, fans hoped to see that power-hitting version of Han again. It hasn\u2019t appeared, and Lotte\u2019s patience is being tested.<\/p>\n
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\u25b2 Han Dong-hee hasn’t hit a single home run this year and is struggling with an unusually high number of ground balls \u24d2 Yonhap News<\/p>\n
At the plate, the results have been poor. In the April 24 game at Gwangju he went 0-for-4, including a double play and two strikeouts, and in the April 25 game he had no impact in three plate appearances before being lifted. Over his last 10 games he\u2019s hitting just .139. For the season he has 18 hits in 78 at-bats\u2014four doubles and zero home runs. Despite often hitting cleanup, he has only four RBIs and has grounded into four double plays. His batting average with runners in scoring position is a meager .158; the numbers look worse than they read.<\/p>\n
Han\u2019s profile is built on power, and that\u2019s how he\u2019s always compensated for defensive lapses. He showed it in previous seasons\u201417 homers in both 2020 and 2021, 14 in 2022\u2014and during his Sangmu tenure. But this year his slugging percentage has dropped to a career low (.054), while his ground-ball rate is at a career high. He\u2019s nearly doubling grounders over fly balls. The familiar offensive punch that defines his game hasn\u2019t shown up.<\/p>\n
Through 19 games his overall average has dipped to .247, and analysts flagged this stretch as a make-or-break period for the season. If he can\u2019t find a fix, a stint in the minors looks possible; if he responds, he can wash away the slow start and help Lotte find momentum. Tagged as a potential heir to Lee Dae-ho since his youth, Han isn\u2019t satisfied with average results. Fans and the club will be watching closely to see if a dugout timeout helps him reset.<\/p>\n
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\u25b2 Han Dong-hee still carries high expectations as fans wait for him to turn things around \u24d2 Yonhap News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lotte’s Han Dong-hee struggles with poor performance, batting .247 without home runs, leading to a position change. A rebound is crucial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/cdn-union.tenbizt.com\/contents\/crawler-dev\/thumbnail\/2026\/04\/CP-2022-0020\/thumb-8590fd16-0e96-4e3c-9739-c7bddaf0e3be.jpg","footnotes":""},"categories":[278095],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n