"I'm going to work harder to push myself away."

2021 2nd Round 1 Cho Hyung-woo (23) and 2025 1st Round 1 Lee Yul-ye (19).

He is a promising catcher who is expected to threaten Lee Ji-young's position in the SSG Landers in the future. The veteran stresses that there is no place for a regular starter.스포츠토토

Lee Ji-young started as the sixth batter catcher in the 2025 exhibition game against the Kiwoom Heroes at SSG Landers Field in Incheon on the 13th and hit a solo home run in the bottom of the sixth inning.

He has been batting hard with a batting average of 0.571 (4 hits in 7 at-bats), two homers, two RBIs and three runs, a on-base percentage of 0.571, a slugging percentage of 1.429 and an on-base percentage of 2.000 (On-base percentage + slugging percentage) in three of the five exhibition games.

This season, Choi Jeong and Han Yu-seom worked together with Futures (second division) juniors in Kagoshima, Japan, not Florida in the U.S., but improved their condition better than anyone else. He also showed strong batting performance in exhibition games in 2023 (batting average of 0.471) and 2024 (0.467), but this time, he is raising expectations by adding more slugging power than ever before.

Last year, Lee had a batting average of 0.279, five homers and 50 RBIs, but played in 123 games and only 914 ⅔ innings as a catcher. While Lee was considering the situation to ease physical burden, he also expressed his will to nurture a catcher who will succeed him.

However, he failed to give the backup catcher more opportunities due to his competition in the top five, and manager Lee Sung-yong expressed his intention to give more opportunities this season.

Lee Ji-young is also helping the younger generation who will succeed her. However, the method is rather special. "Rather than me teaching you anything, I think the first thing to do is to play well and show you how to play well and move well at this age," Lee said. "Of course, I can tell you, but not all of them are correct, so I'm going to go out and work harder so I won't get sick."

By showing an example, we will encourage juniors to voluntarily work harder in training and find a way that suits them.

Of course, I don't want to give up the starting lineup easily. That is why I want to make more voluntary efforts to overcome my expectations. "Players' desire is always what they want to play in the ground the most," he said. "I think it is right that players are naturally pushed out due to poor performance. However, I don't think I will pass it on even though my skills are not as good as my juniors."

Rather, it means that when you try to keep your main position harder and your juniors try to overcome it, you can develop and coexist with each other. "I'll talk a lot and teach a lot, but I'm going to go out and work harder so that my juniors can push me out," he said.

"We still have a long way to go." Lee Yul-ye, the rookie catcher selected by SSG in the first round, went down to the second division to redefine the batting mechanism despite his outstanding catcher's talent, while Cho Hyung-woo, who received favorable reviews in the spring camp, is struggling with a batting average of only 0.100 (one hit in 10 times at bat) when he started an exhibition game.

They are facing a serious challenge to grow fast enough to threaten senior players in all areas, including defense, hitting and physical strength. Veteran catchers still have no intention of backing down.

Lee Ji-young said, "I played about 90 innings last year, and jokingly told the coach, 'I can play more than last year.' I played 1,100 innings including the Korean Series in 2022. I want to play as much as I can," he said. "In order for the team to get better together, a lot of young players have to come up. I have to go out and work harder and make a little less mistake. I will do my best to help my juniors see and learn."