Pro baseball Lotte Giants shortstop Noh Jin-hyeok is rich in nicknames. Among them, the representative one is ‘No Prosecutor’. It came from a skinny and intelligent appearance. When he gets good grades, he is promoted to ‘special prosecutor’.
As a free agent (FA) member of the Giant Corps, his performance this year is at the level of a permanent special prosecutor. He consistently plays the role of a solver in the game and leads Lotte’s early season campaign.
As of the 22nd, Noh Jin-hyeok played in 35 games this season, hitting 0.277, 3 home runs and 21 RBIs. His batting average is also 5th on the team, and his home runs and RBIs are the most among Lotte hitters. On defense, he firmly guards the center line, which was Lotte’s chronic weakness.
Although he complies comprehensively, when looking at the so-called ‘classic stats’, he is not very different from what Noh Jin-hyeok showed in the past. His batting average, on-base percentage, and OPS are down slightly from the previous two years. The home run pace is also hard to see as very fast for a batter who once hit 20.
His true value this season is ‘nutritional value’. A representative metric to measure this is the Win Probability Contribution (WPA). From the team’s point of view, the weight of hits and RBIs recorded in a situation where the game has already tilted significantly cannot be the same as the weight of a dramatic final hit. WPA is a figure that buys the latter higher than the former.
According to the baseball statistics site Statties, his win probability contribution (WPA) this season was 1.63 until the previous day. WPA 0.5 means 1 win for the team, so it means that Lotte has won at least 3 wins. This is higher than in 2020, when Noh Jin-hyuk hit 20 home runs as a member of the NC Dinos.
Looking at the faces of the competitors, the value of Noh Jin-hyeok comes to mind. Throughout the league this season, only five hitters accounted for a greater share of team wins than he did. The domestic players theory was Choi Hyeong-woo of the KIA Tigers and Chae Eun-seong of the Hanwha Eagles. His contribution was higher than Oh Ji-hwan (1.29) of the LG Twins, who signed a large multi-year contract worth 12.4 billion won over six years.
If this is reversed,스포츠토토 it means that the dependence on Noh Jin-hyeok of Lotte’s lineup is high. The recent three-game series against SSG Landers showed this clearly. On the 19th, Noh Jin-hyuk, who played an active role with 2 hits in 4 at-bats, 2 RBIs and 1 point, was silent with a total of 6 at-bats and no hits in two games on the 20th and 21st. Then Lotte also lost the series after one win.
The Nakdong River series between the 3rd and 4th place against NC, which will start on the 23rd, is also up to Noh Jin-hyuk. In the long term, Han Dong-hee and Yoo Kang-nam must play their part for the other line to survive, but there is no suitable alternative right now. Jack Rex is also out with a knee injury. This is the reason why the solver instinct of ‘no prosecutor’ is desperate.