They don’t call the Doosan Bears “angry baseball” anymore. We lost key players in free agency, and we lost a bunch of players in the second round that we should have gotten in the first round.
The second round of the draft was painful. The secondary draft was supposed to be a way for teams to move players between clubs to help bolster their rosters and level out their somewhat unbalanced rosters, but certain teams were leaky. Doosan was a prime example.굿모닝토토
In the five secondary drafts that began in 2012 and ran biennially through 2020, Doosan lost 22 players, a testament to the abundance of promising talent available.
When a team acquires a Class A free agent, the original team is allowed to bring in a compensatory player from the 20-man roster. However, there have been countless instances where teams have cried foul because they don’t have enough players on their roster.
In one case, Doosan had 40 players on the roster. Even so, Doosan was forced to stay within the system’s limits each time.
Kim Sung-bae (left), who was drafted by Doosan in the second round and went on to excel in a Lotte uniform.
It’s not just about numbers. They also sent quality players. In 2012, sidearm Kim Sung-bae left the team after being drafted in the first round by the Lotte Giants. He recorded 14 saves that year and 31 the following year, anchoring Lotte’s back end.
Lee Jae-hak was a highly touted pitcher for Doosan, but left for the upstart NC Dinos after just 16 games. Starting in 2013, when NC made the jump from the second team to the first team, Lee posted double-digit wins in four straight years. So far this season, he has added five more, giving NC 82 career wins. Only one of those wins came against Doosan.
In 2018, Lotte took Oh with a third-round pick. He won the hold title with 25 holds in his first season with Lotte and has been a consistent performer for four seasons.
Shin Min-jae, who was a key part of LG’s unified victory this season, also donned an LG uniform as a second-round pick from Doosan. After joining Doosan as a developmental player in 2015, he didn’t get much of a chance in the first team, but in his fifth season with the club, he batted .277 with 37 stolen bases in 122 games, helping LG win its first title in 29 years.
Of course, there have been instances where Doosan has had fun. When Jang Won-jun headed to Doosan as a free agent in 2015, Doosan returned Jeong Jae-hoon, who had worn a Lotte uniform as compensation, with a third-round pick in the second round of the following year’s draft. Jang struggled at Lotte, and Chinjung was even more disappointed when Doosan won its first title in 14 years in 2015, but he helped the team win the 2016 title with 23 holds.
But even this was not a perfect scenario. A major shoulder injury in 2016 hastened his retirement.
On top of that, he was drafted late in the rookie class after reaching the Korean Series for seven straight years starting in 2015. This was coupled with the fact that many of the secondary players did not show much promise and the team did not have any hope of generational change this season.
After a four-year hiatus, the secondary draft will be held on April 22. It will be held in the reverse order of the previous season’s standings, and Doosan will have the sixth first-round pick. This time, however, the number of protected players for each team has been reduced to 35 instead of 40, and the transfer fee has increased by 100 million won to 400 million won in the first round, 300 million won in the second round, and 200 million won in the third round.
On the other hand, there are not many resources for other teams to take a look at. The nightmare of the past is unlikely to be repeated.
More resources are needed for a successful generation change. Will Doosan finally be able to smile in the KBO’s sixth secondary draft?