Today, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) made a surprise announcement that will greatly affect Korean baseball. According to sports news, the KBO Will Allow Teams to Acquire Temporary Foreign Players. Therefore, this new KBO policy will allow KBO clubs to temporarily replace foreign players that sustain long-term injuries.
In baseball, the health of a player is an important factor in whether a team will win or lose a game. Furthermore, long-term injuries of a player can affect a team’s overall win/loss percentage. However, KBO teams are often able to lessen the damage because of their large roster. Unfortunately, for foreign players, this is a different story as teams can only have 3 foreign players. Therefore, there is no temporary replacement for foreign players leaving teams in a bind.
Next year, the new KBO policy will rectify such situation.
KBO Will Allow Teams to Acquire Temporary Foreign Players in 2024
The new policy set by their board of directors will allow teams to acquire temporary foreign player midseason. In addition, baseball betting news say that the new policy will start at the beginning of 2024.
Thus, teams with foreign players that have an injury requiring treatment for at least 6 weeks will have 2 choices. The first option which was the traditional method would be to release that player and hire a new foreign player. Under the old method, teams could replace their foreign players twice per season.
However, now teams will have a second option. This option will be to put the foreign player on the newly-made rehab list and sign a temporary replacement. Therefore, the team will not lose one of their 2 opportunity to change their foreign player.
The KBO says this new rule will change the competitive imbalance due to long term injuries to foreign baseball players. For example, if NC Dinos star player Erick Fedde got a 6-week injury, they would not want to release him. This is because they would not want to lose such a valuable player. Therefore, they would have to risk losing games while he is recovering. With the new policy, they team, can hire a foreign player with equivalent skills until he recovers. Thus, the damage from the injury will not be as severe
According to Baseball betting sites rely on injury reports and other factors to set their betting odds. With this new policy, the odds may no longer see such drastic changes when a player is on a long-term injury list.
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