Former LG franchise star Seo Yong-bin is returning to LG as a coach.
After winning the Korean Series for the first time in 29 years, LG made a few offseason coaching changes, and Seo Yong-bin will take over as manager of the second team next season. This will be his third stint at LG. “I think he’ll do a good job because he’s failed here before,” LG president Cha Myung-seok said of Seo’s appointment.
“It’s hard to find a coach these days,” said Cha Myung-seok, “and I think you have to choose a very good leader. Many people ask me about Seo Yong-bin, and how I chose him is that he failed here once as a coach, so I think he can do a good job.”
Seo Yong-bin, the second team coach, was criticized for not achieving good results as a coach at LG in the past.
“It’s not that he’s just going to do well, but I saw what he did after he quit here,” Cha said. “He went to graduate school (after quitting LG), learned a lot of sports mechanics, did commentary, and then went to KT’s second team and played a role,” he said.
“In fact, when I told KT coach Lee Kang-cheol that I wanted to take Coach Seo Yong-bin with me this time, he said he wouldn’t let me go unless I went to LG. He told me that other teams also requested him, but he didn’t send him,” he continued.
KT’s second team coach Kim Ki-tae resigned after the season.
KT planned to bring back experienced coach Seo Yong-bin to coach the second team. At the request of Cha Myung-seok, the coach left KT and returned to LG.
Seo Yong-bin joined LG in 1994 and was a major part of the “New Wind Baseball” era, when he and Ryu Ji-hyun and Kim Jae-hyun became the rookie sensation and led LG to the championship. By 2006, he was batting .299 with 760 hits, 22 home runs, 350 RBIs, 307 runs scored, and 31 stolen bases in 828 games.
After retiring from active play in 2006, 토토사이트 Seo underwent coaching training with the Junichi Dragons of Nippon Professional Baseball. He began his front office career as a scout for LG in 2008 and began coaching in the middle of that year as a hitting coach for the developmental team.
In 2010 and 2011, he led the players as the first team hitting coach. In 2012, he moved down to the second team to coach hitting, and in 2013, he was the first team assistant hitting coach. After the 2013 season, he retired from coaching and traveled to Junichi, Japan, for his coaching training.
After a year of training in Junichi, he returned to LG in 2015 as the head coach of the developmental team.
During the season, he was promoted to first team hitting coach. He served as the first team hitting coach until 2017, when he resigned at the end of the season.
After leaving the field, he studied for a master’s program at Hancheon University and became a commentator in 2018. After a stint as a commentator, he was appointed as KT’s second team coach ahead of the 2021 season. He served as the second team coach for two years and this year as the second team head coach.
With his experience as a second-team coach at KT, Lee returned to his hometown team LG to take charge of second-team development. “Since Lee Kang-cheol is going to LG, we should let him go, so we brought him here,” Cha Myung-seok said. “We’ve seen how he approaches the players and how he trains them,” he added.
“The reason why we brought him back is because of how loyal he is to the team, and the rest of it is up to me, the head coach, and the head coach of the second team to discuss and set the direction, so we decided that he can do a good job with the coaching staff,” Cha explained.
“I have a lot of concerns, but I don’t know that. We believe we can do a good job, and we made the choice. We are going to a system that can produce results in the development of the second team next year, so I hope you can watch it.”