On June 3, the Lotte Giants were sitting in third place in the top South Korean baseball league, with a 29-18 record putting them just two games behind the first-place SSG Landers. Things were looking up for the franchise that hasn't won a championship since 1992 and has only been an occasional postseason participant in recent years.
Over the next three weeks, though, much of the hope the Giants gave their famously passionate fan base has evaporated, instead giving way to a familiar sense of despair and resignation -- that maybe this wasn't going to be the year after all.
In this file photo from June 4, 2023, Lotte Giants players bow to their fans after losing to the Kia Tigers 6-0 in a Korea Baseball Organization regular season game at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
In this file photo from June 4, 2023, Lotte Giants players bow to their fans after losing to the Kia Tigers 6-0 in a Korea Baseball Organization regular season game at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
Entering the new week of play in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), the Giants are right at the .500 mark at 33-33. They are now nine games back of the Landers, who are still in first place, and only one game up on the Doosan Bears. The Giants have the league's worst record for June at 6-16.
The NC Dinos took advantage of the Giants' downfall by climbing to third place this month, though the Dinos themselves have dropped four straight games.
With a little over half of the season left, it may still be too early for Giants fans to abandon hope entirely. But a quick start, followed by weeks and even months of subpar baseball, has been a recurring theme for recent Giants teams.
The major difference between this year and previous years has been that the slide began in June, as opposed to May.
Numbers show that the Giants were overachieving earlier in the year, and the rest of the competition has finally caught up to them.
For the month of June, they have the worst team on-base plus slugging (OPS) at .648. Their bullpen has the worst ERA this month at 6.51, and their entire pitching staff is tied for the worst ERA for June at 5.18.
Even when the Giants were going strong in May, they had a middling bullpen. Offensively, they were near the bottom in OPS, hits and home runs.
Giants manager Larry Sutton has attributed the team's recent struggles to injuries, and singled out the absence of leadoff man An Gweon-su as the most devastating one.
An is recovering from elbow surgery that he underwent in early June and is expected to be out for about three months.
As the leadoff in April, An put up a solid .309/.363/.420 line. But as his elbow acted up, An was dropped to the No. 2 spot in the lineup, and his bat went cold. As the No. 2 hitter, An only batted .194/.265/.258.
The Giants had a .350 on-base percentage from their leadoff spot in April, but that figure has plummeted to .283 so far in June, by far the lowest in the KBO. Sutton has gone through three different players in the leadoff spot this month, with none of Hwang Seong-bin, Kim Min-suk and Go Seung-min able to match An's production.
An, 30, had emerged as a clubhouse leader before he hit the sidelines. Kim Min-suk, a 19-year-old rookie, and Yoon Dong-hee, a second-year pro at 19, have both said they miss having An around in the dugout as their mentor.
Elsewhere, outfielder Zach Reks hasn't been able to match his strong half-season showing from a year ago as a midseason arrival. He is batting only .247/.342/.328 with two homers and 24 RBIs in 47 games. He missed about half of May with a knee injury and hasn't gone deep in 17 games since his return earlier in June.
Source: Yonhap News Agency