Rookie of the Year race between Myung-geun Park and Dong-joo Moon…the variables are injuries and AG.

After being named All-Stars in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), the LG Twins’ Park Myung-geun and the Hanwha Eagles’ Moon Dong-ju are in a serious Rookie of the Year race.

For LG, Park Myung-geun, the 27th overall pick in the third round of last year’s rookie draft, has been outstanding. In 36 games in the first half of the year, he went 4-0 with five saves and a 3.25 ERA, serving as a middle and closer in the bullpen.

Park Myung-geun took over as the closer in May after Go Woo-seok left the team with a back injury, going 1-0 with two saves and a 0.82 ERA. LG, which entered May in third place, won four straight games and five in a row to move into first place.

After the return of Ko Woo-seok, he served as a middle-of-the-rotation ace. When bullpen core Jung Woo-young faltered in June with a 5.73 ERA, he took over, going 3-0 with a 2.93 ERA in 12 games.

However, Park, who is leading the Rookie of the Year race with both team and individual performances, will have to overcome injuries. After his last start on June 6, he was removed from the first team roster due to elbow soreness and did not participate in the All-Star Game as a manager’s pick.

In the last series of the first half, manager Yoon Kyung-yeop said, “Park Myung-geun has a history of elbow ligament injuries in high school. He threw too many pitches in the first half, so we had to take him out of the All-Star Game.” “We’ll give him a week off in the second half and start him a little later.”

Hanwha’s Moon Dong-ju has also made his presence felt in the Rookie of the Year race, going 6-6 with a 3.47 ERA in 16 games. He joined Hanwha as a first-round pick last year and has pitched 28 and two-thirds innings, but he hasn’t pitched more than 30 innings, so he’s eligible for Rookie of the Year honors this season.

After struggling in May with an 8.22 ERA in four games, Moon turned things around in June. He went 3-1 with a 2.14 ERA in six games, fulfilling his role as the No. 1 starter in Korea, and during the team’s eight-game winning streak that began against the KIA Tigers on May 21, he appeared in two games and tossed 14 scoreless innings.안전놀이터

With homegrown starters Kim Min-woo and Jang Min-jae sidelined since the middle of last month due to injuries, Moon Dong-ju was able to form a strong trio with the foreign one-two punch. Hanwha went on a winning streak and ended the first half in eighth place, three and a half games behind fourth-place NC.

However, Moon will only play in the league until the end of August as he will be competing in the Hangzhou Asian Games later in the year. A gap in his record in September and October could put him at a disadvantage in the Rookie of the Year race. “We will play about seven games in the second half,” Choi Won-ho said in the final away game of the first half, “and if we finish in the last week of August, we will have about three weeks left (before the Asian Games) to adjust our condition.”