"I've seen all the defensive scenes" Confident Hanwha, Hardworking Mode Peraza said, "My attitude is better than two years ago" I was satisfied

*This content was translated by AI.

This season, the Hanwha Eagles will try to win the championship. Jonathan Peraza (28), who returned to the team with 10 billion won big gun Kang Baek-ho, is expected to definitely help the batting lineup.

The problem is defense. Not only Moon Hyun-bin, who will be in charge of the corner outfield, but also Peraza is also a former infielder and is not yet a stable player in the outfield defense. This is also the reason why there are concerns that Oh Jae-won, a rookie with excellent defense, should take over the center fielder.

The attack has already been verified. Moon Hyun-bin has been selected as a member of the national team and is preparing for the World Baseball Classic (WBC), and Peraza left a strong impact two years ago and won the MVP award in the minor league last year. After all, the problem is defense.

Peraza, who played for Hanwha in 2024, posted a batting average of 0.275 with 24 home runs, 70 RBIs and 75 points in 122 games, an on-base percentage of 0.364 and an on-base percentage of 0.486 and an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.80. Young and pleasant personality and attitude were not bad. The problem was due to a defense that is not yet stable and a hit that fell sharply in the second half. He hit a batting average of 0.312 with 16 home runs in the first half, but only hit 0.229 with eight home runs in the second half.

In the end, Peraza, who signed a minor contract with the San Diego Padres Padres without being able to renew his contract, showed a batting average of 0.307 with 19 home runs, 113 RBIs and 106 points in 138 games for the affiliated Triple-A team, El Paso Chihuahua, with a 0.391 on-base percentage, a 0.510 slugging percentage, and an OPS of 0.901. He proudly won the Minor League Player of the Year award. It was unfortunate that I didn't get a call-up opportunity in the big league, but thanks to this, it was easy to wear Hanwha's uniform again.

Peraza was guaranteed $1 million (about 1.44 billion won), the highest amount of new foreign players in 2024, but this time, he signed a contract for up to $1 million and $900,000 (about 1.3 billion won), including $100,000 in options.

Hanwha Eagles observed Peraza last season and confirmed their defensive ability and quality line drive batting production capacity, Hanwha explained. "We succeeded in recruiting after recruiting with a number of clubs, including the NPB club in Japan."

It also dispelled concerns about the defense. A Hanwha official who spoke to Star News at the time said, "We checked all of Peraza's defense scenes. "The range of defense was not bad, and the port was much more stable than before," he said, expressing confidence.

In order to make use of the synergy of the hit, you have to play consistently, and for this, there should be no problems in defense. Even Kang Baek-ho is heading to the Australian camp with his outfield glove, so Peraza's shoulders are also heavy.

So far, it is being prepared smoothly. In a video released on the club's official YouTube Eagles TV on the 12th, Peraza was training harder for defense than anyone else.

A total of eight people, including rookies Oh Jae-won, Moon Hyun-bin, Lee Won-seok and Lee Jin-young, went to outfield training. It was a training session in which coach Choo Seung-woo played fungo on various courses and the players handled it. In his first training session, Peraza handled the ball stably without making any major mistakes.

Additional defensive training followed. Along with Han Ji-yoon and Lee Won-seok, Peraza was the main character of the rest of the study. This time, it was a training exercise through the Fungo machine. He focused on training on the batting that goes over the back of his head, which he said was the trickiest for outfielders.

Peraza, who has no outfield experience yet, had some difficulty adapting to the difficult ball, but he repeated his training and showed a noticeable change after taking coach Choo Seung-woo's one-point lesson.

After the training, coach Choo said, "I have a stable posture, but the speed decreases when I catch it as I turn, and I have to speed up again, so I can catch it, but keep thinking about what I lacked little by little, and make up for it," but praised, "My posture toward baseball is better now than two years ago."

"Thank you" for coach Choo Seung-woo's words, and when Lee Won-seok asked if coach Choo was handsome, he said, "Yes, a lot."

His cheerful personality, active attitude, and batting have already received points. If it does not create a big hole only in defense, Hanwha's batting synergy this season will be as effective as expected. He is already recruited by confidence in his growth, but he is intensively supplementing his weaknesses in this training camp and gaining momentum to grow as a player once again.

<© STARNEWS. All rights reserved. No reproduction or redistribution allowed.>

*This content was translated by AI.