The ‘rookie coach’ got it right. Doosan manager Lee Seung-yeop has made history in his first year at the helm.
Doosan won its ninth game of the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League against the Lotte Giants 8-5 at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul on Friday, extending its winning streak to 11 games, the longest in franchise history.
The previous record was 10 straight wins. Doosan experienced its first 10-game winning streak on June 16, 2000, against the Hyundai Unicorns in Jamsil on June 27, under Kim In-sung, and its second 10-game winning streak on June 6, 2018, against the Gochuk Nexen Heroes (now the Kiwoom Heroes) in Daejeon and June 16, against the Hanwha Eagles in Daejeon, under Kim Tae-hyung. However, 11 consecutive wins is a record that neither the “national manager” nor the “championship manager” has achieved.
With the win, Doosan manager Lee Seung-yeop broke the record for the most consecutive wins in the first year of a domestic manager’s tenure in the KBO (previously held by Chun Boseong of the LG Twins in 1997, Lee Hee-soo of the Hanwha Eagles in 1999, and Lee Kwang-eun of LG in 2000). Including foreign managers, the record for the longest winning streak in a manager’s debut season is held by Lotte manager Jerry Royster (11) in 2008.
Even if you expand the scope to the entire KBO League, an 11-game winning streak is not a common occurrence. The most recent 11-game winning 토토 streak occurred in 2020, when the reigning champion NC Dinos won 11 straight games from September 20 against Sasak Lotte (game one of a doubleheader) to October 1 against the Changwon SK Wyverns (now SSG Landers). It took Doosan a whopping 1027 days to follow suit.
When Lee took over as Doosan’s head coach before the season, he was faced with the task of shaking off the “rookie” label. He had never coached in the professional ranks before, and he was tasked with turning around a team that finished ninth in the regular season the year before.
Doosan had a rough start to the season, but thanks to the coaching staff’s communication and the rebound of its main players, the team is slowly gaining momentum. Starting on July 1 against Lotte in Ulsan, Doosan was not satisfied with a 5 percent chance of winning the title, but took over the third spot and is now overtaking LG and SSG in the race for the top spot. It will be interesting to see how far Lee Seung-yeop-ho’s ‘surge’ will go.
