Brian O’Grady (30, USA), a new foreign hitter for the professional baseball Hanwha Eagles, ate rice with Kim Ha-seong (28) at the San Diego Padres of the American Professional Baseball (MLB) last year.
It is said that the recommendation of former colleague Kim Ha-seong was effective in the process of Hanwha club recruiting O’Grady, who played in Japan last year.
At the time, Ha-sung Kim praised Hanwha, saying, “O’Grady has good power, is sincere outside of the game, and has a good sense of professionalism.”
So, in December of last year, O’Grady signed an annual salary of 700,000 dollars and an incentive of 200,000 dollars (total of 1.12 billion won) with Hanwha and wore an eagle uniform.
Since 2019, he has gone through the Cincinnati Reds, Tampa Bay Rays, and San Diego, achieving a batting average of 0.184, 4 homers, and 12 RBIs in 62 games in his career. His career minor league results are a .256 batting average, 91 home runs, and 345 RBIs in 658 games.
In a phone call with Yonhap News on the 13th, O’Grady said he felt burdened as a former big leaguer, but expressed his aspirations to overturn people’s expectations for Hanwha.
O’Gredi confessed, 카지노사이트 “Baseball always has to fight pressure, and as an American in Korea, there’s another pressure I feel,” but I could feel confidence in the upcoming season from him.
“It’s really cool to see a team that everyone thought they couldn’t possibly win and subvert people’s expectations,” he said. “It sounds like a lot of fun.”
“As a leader, I will pass on my experience to my teammates and help them play right and play hard,” he said. “Of course it won’t be easy, but things change quickly in baseball. “he said.
O’Grady also mentioned that Japan’s Seibu Lions, which he joined last year, were last in the Pacific League in the 2021 season. In the 2022 season when he joined, he rebounded to third place.
He said, “The team was in last place in 2021, but last year it showed a different look and produced good results,” he said. “I will show my play on the ground without worrying about grades.”
“I heard that there are many young players who grow while gaining experience in Hanwha, and I heard that a good hitter (Chae Eun-seong) also signed a free agency contract,” he said. told
Last year, he posted a batting average of 0.213, 15 homers and 46 RBIs in Seibu, Japan, and expected that he would adapt better in Korea, his second foreign country.
O’Grady, who analyzed that “the pitching styles of Korean baseball and Japanese baseball are similar,” said, “I was separated from my family in Japan, but this year, my family is going to come back to Korea for a while. I was able to greatly relieve the burden on my mind.”
Foreign coaches, including coach Subero, and Hanwha foreign pitcher Birch Smith (32, USA), who played together at Seibu, are also a great help.
He said, “I tend to talk a lot with the coaches, but I couldn’t do that in Japan.