*This content was translated by AI.
The exhibition game was unusual. There was even a controversy over 'Taeng-Taeng-Ball'. The new season, which baseball fans have been waiting for, finally announced the opening, and the trend continued in the 10 games held for two days.
As many as 24 home runs were hit in the 10 games of the 2026 Shinhan SOL KBO League opening series held at five stadiums nationwide on the 28th and 29th.
Last year, it was in the form of pitching and hitting, but it was possible to expect changes this season. This is because 119 home runs poured out in 60 exhibition games. The average was 1.98 per game, which was comparable to the exhibition game (2.03), which was the most home run season ever in 2018.
As expected, many home runs have been hit since the first day. In the opening five games on the 28th, he scored 15 runs with eight home runs. There were some hits that could be felt as a home run as soon as he hit it, but there were often cases where he did not. In particular, Hanwha Chae Eun-sung's home run hit was a line-drive hit with a launch angle of only 21.6 degrees. Chae Eun-sung was not sure, and even though he threw a ball, he sprinted all the way, and Raul Alcanta, a Kiwoom pitcher who confirmed that he crossed the fence, also reacted absurdly.
A similar situation continued from the exhibition game. The players I met on the opening media day were also aware of this. Among the players, there is a reaction that the ball seems to be spreading more.
SSG Landers closer Cho Byung-hyun said, "When I looked at the future, I felt a lot that the pitchers' abilities would be higher. Even if the ball goes out a lot, it would be good to think about how to play against the batter. I'm going to study that a lot," he said positively. However, he clearly sympathized with the opinion that the ball was more extended than expected. Citing Ko Myung-joon, a close friend of the same age, as an example, he explained, "I also felt like a hit that (the late) Myung-joon pushed and hit was passing over."
In five games on the 29th, 16 home runs, twice as much as the previous day, poured in. Twenty-nine runs were made with home runs alone. It was overwhelming compared to 2016 (1483 home runs, 2.06 home runs per game) and 2018 (1756 home runs, 2.44 average), when the most home runs in the last decade were recorded.
However, the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) said there was no problem with official balls. On the 30th, five samples of AAK-100 of Skyline Sports, a single game-use port, were randomly collected from each stadium and commissioned the Korea Sports Development Institute's sports product test center of the Korea Sports Promotion Agency (KSPO), and all samples were confirmed to pass the first occasional test from the 26th to the 28th. The acceptance standard of the official ball repulsion coefficient was 0.4034 to 0.4234, which was within the normal range with an average of 0.4093. There was no abnormality in circumference, weight, and seam width.
Of course, it is difficult to conclude that this season is a 'tago-tugger' after playing only 10 games. However, it cannot be denied that the trend is quite similar to the previous Tagotjeo seasons. In 2016, 17 home runs were scored in 12 games in the opening series, and 21 celebrations were scored in 10 games in 2018. It was also noteworthy that Son Ho-young (Lotte) and Park Gun-woo (NC), who had only four and nine home runs last season, tied for the lead in this category with two home runs.
In 2016 and 2018, there were also many home runs from exhibition games. In 2016, 140 home runs (average 1.73) in 81 games and 61 home runs (average 2.03) in 30 games in 2018, and this trend drew continuity until the regular season. It can be expected that this season will also be a 'recorded all-time' aspect of riding and pitching. After the 2018 season, KBO eventually lowered the rebound coefficient of the official ball, and the number of home runs plummeted to 1,014 the following year. In fact, it was like acknowledging that the rebound coefficient was excessive.
On the other hand, last season, when he was a pitching hitter, he had 53 home runs (average 1.26) in 42 exhibition games and 1,191 home runs (average 1.65) in the season, showing a big difference from the pitching time.
The batting average also recorded 0.270 in exhibition games in 2016, 0.290 in season, 0.269 in exhibition games and 0.286 in season in 2018, but last year, it recorded 0.245 in exhibition games and 0.262 in season, showing opposite trends. This year's batting average in the exhibition game was 0.267, which was significantly higher than last year's, and although the samples were small, it was 0.280, which was similar to the pitching season.
It is difficult to evaluate that either Tagotjeo or Togotjeo is helpful in the development or box office of baseball. Advantages and disadvantages coexist in all aspects. However, expectations that baseball will be more aggressive than the past few seasons are certainly rising.
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*This content was translated by AI.
