*This content was translated by AI.
National left-hander Oh Won-seok (24, KT Wiz) promised to continue his performance this season and advance to autumn baseball.
Oh Won-seok met with reporters at Incheon International Airport ahead of his departure from KT Spring Camp in Geelong, Australia, on the 21st and said, "I was offered an annual salary and did it right away without any worries. The club took good care of me with what I did last year. I'm grateful, and I believe you'll take better care of me if you do better this year," he said with a smile.
In the salary negotiations completed before leaving the country, Oh completed his contract for 2026 at 230 million won, up 64.3 percent. Oh Won-seok showed poor performance in the second half of last year with one win, five losses and a 5.62 ERA in nine games. However, his performance in the first half was impressive enough to raise his salary significantly. He succeeded in winning his first single season in the first half with 10 wins and 3 losses with a 2.78 ERA and 78 strikeouts in 90 ⅔ innings. It was a moment when expectations became 100% reality at the time of the trade.
Oh Won-seok was named the first SK Wyverns (currently SSG Landers) in the 2020 KBO Rookie Draft and was called the "second Kim Kwang-hyun." He has been given the opportunity in the starting rotation since his second year, but he has not been able to have steady ball power every year. In the end, after five years of living in Incheon, he left Incheon for Suwon for the first time in a one-on-one trade with Kim Min after the end of the 2024 season. Although he failed to completely wash away his prejudice by showing ups and downs in the second half, he achieved a career high with 11 wins and 8 losses with a 3.67 ERA and 113 strikeouts in 132 ⅓ innings in 25 regular season games. In November last year, he added another national flag to raise his status.
Oh Won-seok, who cited last year's Australian spring camp as his secret. "It was a really unforgettable year because I recorded a career high in the first season of my transfer. Since last year's Australian spring camp, the coach and coach have advised me to reduce my pitching form. I kept doing that, but it came out naturally in the season and led to good results," he said.
Oh Won-seok also answered silently with training to the club, which recognized its performance in the first half and expressed expectations. Oh Won-seok said, "After returning from the national team (November), I took a week off and immediately worked out. So the off-season seems to have gone by quickly. "The training of the national team was definitely motivated by being with people who are good at baseball," he said.
The baseball community is divided over the cause of Oh Won-seok's ups and downs, which are pointed out every year. The player himself knows that kind of gaze. Oh Won-seok said, "Actually, I don't know why my performance slowed down in the second half. People around me talk a lot about my physical strength, but it doesn't feel big with my body. I think there will be some psychological aspects, so I'm going to think a little more about it," he said.
"I think I'll have to go again in the second half of the year to find out. Still, I gained about 8 kilograms of weight so that I wouldn't lose my physical strength. When I went to the national team, I weighed 82-3kg and now I weigh more than 90kg. I think I'll lose weight during the season, but I rather gained weight because I didn't want to lose a lot of weight," he added.
I was used to fall baseball because I was in a good team all the time. Oh Won-seok spent three of his six career years playing fall baseball, and in 2022, he experienced his first KBO regular-season wire-to-wire win at SSG and winning the Korean Series.
However, in the first year of KT's transfer, the team's record of consecutive advancements to fall baseball was cut off, and he must have suffered from a slump in the second half of the year. Oh Won-seok said, "KT is a team that always went to fall baseball, but I couldn't come and do it. So I really want to go to fall baseball this year. It's a team I've always been to, so I think I'll be able to go if I do it. I will also throw hard so that I can go to autumn baseball," he said.
<© STARNEWS. All rights reserved. No reproduction or redistribution allowed.>
*This content was translated by AI.
