Hanwha Eagles finish spring training on top

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Hanwha Eagles finish spring training on top

Roh Si-hwan of the Hanwha Eagles is congratulated by his teammates after hitting a home run in a spring training game against the KT Wiz at Hanwha Life Eagles Park in Daejeon on March 15.  [YONHAP]

Roh Si-hwan of the Hanwha Eagles is congratulated by his teammates after hitting a home run in a spring training game against the KT Wiz at Hanwha Life Eagles Park in Daejeon on March 15. [YONHAP]

 
If spring training really mattered, the Hanwha Eagles would be looking pretty good right now.
 
The Eagles finished spring training on Tuesday with nine wins, three losses and a draw to top the spring training table, narrowly beating out the Samsung Lions with 10 wins and four losses.
 
As the Eagles finished the 2022 season in last place and the Lions finished in seventh, first and second place finishes are pretty exciting stuff.
 
Unfortunately for the Daejeon and Daegu clubs, spring training doesn't actually count and the warm up games don't offer an especially accurate barometer of how a team will perform over the full 144 game season.  
 
In fact, it’s often the opposite — in 2021 the Eagles won spring training and finished dead last in the regular season, while last year the LG Twins, Lotte Giants and Kia Tigers tied for first, with LG ultimately finishing third, Kia fifth and Lotte eighth.
 
While their spring training success may not mean Hanwha are destined to dominate the 2023 KBO season, the middle of the table does suggest that the major players from last season are likely to be a significant threat again this year.
 
The reigning champion and pennant holding SSG Landers finished spring training in a respectable fourth, tied with the KT Wiz and slightly behind the Twins in third. All three teams made it to the playoffs last season and the Twins were one of the few teams to come close to threatening the Landers’ wire-to-wire regular season victory.
 
The Kia Tigers, who finished in fifth place last season, and Doosan Bears tied for sixth in spring training. The result is a good one for the Bears, who plummeted to ninth last season, but it’s far too early to tell whether their dramatic coaching overhaul will actually pay off.
 
The NC Dinos and Lotte Giants, who both finished in the bottom half of the table last season, took eighth and ninth, but the biggest surprise is the 2023 runner-up Kiwoom Heroes dropping to last place with four wins, nine losses and a tie.
 
That result is a particularly bad one for the Heroes and would be cause for concern, if any of this actually mattered.
 
What does matter is the actual 2023 KBO season, beginning Saturday as the Giants face the Bears in southern Seoul, the Tigers travel to Incheon to take on the Landers, the Dinos and Lions meet in Daegu, LG and KT face off in Suwon, Gyeonggi and the Eagles play the Heroes in western Seoul.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]
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