The Asia Professional Baseball Championship (APBC), in which Asian baseball prospects compete for supremacy, will be held for the first time in six years.
On the 16th, KBO announced that it would participate in APBC 2023, a tournament consisting of young generations under the age of 24 from four Asian countries, including Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Australia, in November next year to determine the strongest team in Asian professional baseball. It was scheduled to be held every four years after the first tournament was held in 2017, but it was pushed back by two years due to the COVID-19 situation.
APBC was established with the purpose of providing young players from each country with opportunities to participate in national competitions and pride as national representatives, and discovering promising players and star players who will play an active role in international competitions such as the WBC in the future.
The 2nd APBC will be held at the Tokyo Dome in Japan from November 16 to 19 next year. Previously, there were three participating countries, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, but Australia has been confirmed to participate for the first time in this competition, and a total of four countries will participate. This tournament will consist of a total of 26 players, including players under the age of 24 (those born on or after January 1, 1999) 안전놀이터 or under 3 years of professional experience, and 3 wild card players. The coach who will take over the leadership of the national team has yet to be determined.
At the time of the first tournament in 2017, the Korean entry consisted of 25 players under the age of 24 without a wild card. Ha-seong Kim, a major leaguer who is currently playing for the San Diego Padres, Jung-hoo Lee of Kiwoom, Se-woong Park of Lotte, and Ja-wook Koo of Samsung, who are now representative players of the league, participated in the tournament as promising players at the time.
Lee Jung-hoo, who was the youngest member of APBC at the time of the first competition, was born in 1998 and has already lost his qualifications to participate in APBC. It may be possible to go with a wild card, but just as the wild card was not selected for the future development of Korean baseball in the first tournament, there is a high possibility that next year’s tournament will be composed of promising players. Lee Jung-hoo’s chances of being selected are not high. For this reason, it seems that all entries will be replaced in the second competition compared to the first competition.
Pitchers: Woo-Young Jung, Min-Ho Lee (LG), Won-Seok Oh (SSG), Tae-In Won (Samsung), Ki-Hoon Kim, Hae-Young Jung, Eui-Ri Lee (KIA), Cheol-Won Jeong (Doosan), Joon So-Jun (kt), Jin-Wook Kim, Jun-Yong Choi (Lotte), Moon Dong-ju (Hanwha), Beast Kang Baek-ho (kt), Jung Eun-won, Noh Si-hwan (above Hanwha), Moon Bo-kyung (LG), Kim Ji-chan (Samsung), Son Seong-bin (Lotte), Kim Hwi-jip (Kiwoom), etc. It can be.
Meanwhile, Ahn Woo-jin, who was born in 1999 and is eligible to participate in APBC, was not selected for the interest list for the Hangzhou Asian Games held in September next year despite his outstanding performances this year. Attention is focusing on whether Ahn Woo-jin, who recently expressed resentment over the stigma of school violence in 2017, will wear the national team uniform at APBC. Looking at the process of the first competition, it seems that the preliminary entry for the second competition will be announced in August next year, and the final entry will be announced around October.