Lotte Giants hire Kim Tae-hyoung as manager

The Lotte Giants on Friday announced the appointment of Kim Tae-hyoung as the 21st head coach of the Busan team. Kim joins the Giants having spent a year as a TV analyst after the Bears chose not to renew his contract at the end of the 2022 season.

Kim Tae-hyoung [YONHAP]

The Lotte Giants on Friday announced the appointment of Kim Tae-hyoung as the 21st head coach of the Busan team.

Kim joined the Giants on a three-year deal worth 2.4 billion won ($1.8 million) including a 600-million-won signing bonus.

Kim joins the Giants having spent a year as a TV analyst after the Doosan Bears chose not to renew his contract at the end of the 2022 season.

Kim’s departure last year came as a surprise — although he had a bad 2022 season, he had previously lead the Bears through a record-breaking seven-year spell that saw the club appear in the Korean Series seven straight time, winning the championship three times and taking the pennant three times as well.

Kim was a crucial part of the Bears operation for the best part of 30 years, joining the club in 1990 as a catcher and playing 11 years before graduating to a playing coach in 2001 and fully transitioning to the Bears’ coaching staff in 2002.

After 10 years as a battery coach, Kim briefly moved to the SK Wyverns, now the SSG Landers, for two years, before returning to Doosan as manager in 2015.

Doosan won the championship title in Kim’s first year at the helm, sweeping the Samsung Lions in the Korean Series despite finishing the regular season in third place.

That 2015 title started one of the most dominant reigns in Korean baseball history, with the Bears returning in 2016 to take the pennant and sweep the Korean Series.

Doosan continued to make it to the Korean Series for the next five years, winning the pennant in 2018 and both the pennant and the Korean Series title in 2019. The Bears slipped further down the regular season table in 2020 and 2021, finishing third and fourth, but still came alive in the postseason to reach the Korean Series.

Prioritizing player development and a versatile lineup, Kim successful kept the Bears afloat even as they lost a long line of starting players to free agency in recent years. He is known as a strong-willed and decisive leader with a clear idea of how he wantㄴ the game played, a trait that is said to have occasionally got him into trouble back when he was a player.

Kim now joins a Giants squad that have failed to make it to the playoffs since a first round loss to the NC Dinos in 2017, their sole postseason appearance in the last 11 years.

The Giants finished the 2023 season in seventh place, with former manager Larry Sutton stepping down in August citing health reasons. Interim manager Lee Jong-un managed the Giants through the end of the season.

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