Baseball team SSG has fired manager Kim Won-hyung (51), six days after being eliminated from the semi-playoffs (semi-PO).

SSG said, "We have terminated the contract with Coach Kim. We decided that we need to make changes and innovations, such as changing the overall team operation and player generation. Changes were inevitable in order to renew the team and transform it into a stronger team that is more loved," SSG announced on Nov. 31.

SSG, which finished third in the regular season, stepped down from "fall baseball" on March 25 after being swept in three games in the semifinals against fourth-ranked NC.

Kim was the first head coach of SSG. He was appointed as SK's eighth head coach in November 2020 for a two-year, 700 million won contract, and later became the "first head coach" when SSG acquired and recreated SK.

In his first year, Kim led the team from ninth to sixth in the regular season standings, and in his second year, last year, the team won the first "wire-to-wire" championship in Korean baseball history. SSG re-signed Kim for three years and 2.2 billion won, the highest contract for an active manager in the KBO at the time.

This is not the first time a manager who won the Korean Series the previous year has been fired by a club the following year. Kim Sung-geun, 81, the former manager of SSG's predecessor SK, was fired in August 2010 after leading the team to the Korean Series title. However, at the time, it was due to a contract dispute between Kim and the club.

Former coach Paik Incheon, 80, who led LG to the 1990 unified championship, also failed to re-sign after the team finished sixth the following year. 토토사이트