FA market welcomes flourishing homebrewed aces

The Free Agent (FA) market for Korean Baseball League (KBL) will open five days later, with homebrewed baseball aces "Kim-Yang-Cha" (Kim Gwang-hyun, Yang Hyun-jong, Cha Woo-chan).

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ormer teams who watch their star players enter the FA market always dealt with the same way; "retainment at all costs." The current teams who own the three abovementioned players also showed similar responses. However, differences always remain among teams and players, as it can be seen from Park Sun-min's transfer to the NC Dinos and Chung Woo-ram's transfer to the Hanwha Eagles last winter. Moreover, only the team that covets the most is honored with the player of their choice. As a result, the two players changed uniforms as they broke the highest salary as a batter (9.6 billion won for four years) and a bull pen pitcher (8.4 billion won for four years).

The SK Wyverns and the Kia Tigers already showed their respects to their respective aces by giving out fat salaries at 850 million won and 750 million won to Kim Gwang-hyun and Yang Hyun-jong, respectively. When the two players continue to play for their teams, it will soon be a matter of time when they break the record-high 9 billion won for four-year contract signed by pitcher Yoon Seok-min in 2014.

The two southpaws recently announced to go global under the premise of a "reasonable condition." While the two pitchers already knocked the Major League Baseball in 2014 through the posting system after receiving consensus from their own team, they postponed their challenge due to exorbitantly low bid. This year, Yang opened possibilities of penetrating the Japanese league. However, the two players will put their current teams at the top of the list when they are faced with various barriers before going global.

Bo-Mi Im bom@donga.com