The season of baseball has come back. The 10 KBO League teams, which have been sweating throughout the winter, will begin their six-month long journey from Tuesday.안전놀이터

The 2025 Shinhan Sol Bank KBO League will start at 2 p.m. on the 22nd with the opening game between the Kiwoom Heroes-Samsung Lions (Daegu Samsung Lions Park), the Lotte Giants-LG Twins (Seoul Jamsil Stadium), the Doosan Bears-SSG Landers (Incheon SSG Landers Field), the Hanwha Eagles-KT Wiz (Suwon KT Wiz Park), and the NC Dinos-KIA Tigers (Gwangju-Kia Champions Field).

The last four games of the exhibition game were canceled due to snowfall on the 18th, but the spring weather came as the opening of the KBO League approached.

At the five stadiums where the opening game will be held, temperatures are expected to rise to 15-20 degrees Celsius around 2 p.m. at the start of the game.

Each club, which strengthened its power through free agent (FA) contracts and trades last winter, raised their sense of play by playing spring camps and practice games, and finished preparing for the season after exhibition games.

This year, all 10 clubs let foreign pitchers take the responsibility for starting the opening game. It is the first time in eight years that no Korean pitcher has been included in the starting lineup for the opening game since 2017.

KIA, which enjoyed the joy of winning the 2024 season, put foreign ace James Nail as the starting pitcher, and NC selected new foreign pitcher Logan Allen.

Ariel Furado, a right-hander who moved to Samsung after playing for Kiwoom from 2023 to 2024, will face his "old teammates" from the first round. Samsung will counter with its new face Kenny Rosenberg.

In Jamsil, LG's new foreign Yoni Chirinos and Charlie Barnes (Lotte), who will be in their fourth year in the KBO League, will face off as starters.

Doosan freshman Col Irvin and SSG experienced Drew Anderson will face off in Incheon.

In Suwon, "experienced" Enmanuel de Heissus (KT), who played for Kiwoom in 2024, and new face Cody Ponce (Hanwha) will take the mound as starters.

Last year's champion KIA is considered a strong candidate for this year as it does not have much power leakage. Jang Hyun-sik, a must-win group, left for LG as an FA, but he minimized the leakage by recruiting Cho Sang-woo in a trade.

On top of that, Samsung, which won the runner-up prize in the Korean Series last year, KT, which boasted a stable pitching and hitting power during the exhibition game, and LG, the 2023 season champion, are mentioned as candidates for fall baseball.

Hanwha, which will anchor at Daejeon Hanwha Life Ball Park, its new home stadium this year, is dreaming of entering autumn baseball for the first time in seven years since 2018.

Lotte, which is in its second year under head coach Kim Tae-hyung, will also start the season with the goal of advancing to the postseason for the first time in eight years since 2017.

The KBO League, which opened the era of 10 million spectators for the first time since the launch of the 2024 season, is aiming for a "hit and hit" for the second consecutive year.

Starting with this year's exhibition game, he showed off his enthusiasm and turned on the green light for 10 million spectators for the second consecutive year.

This year's 42 exhibition games attracted a total of 321,763 spectators. Last year, 46 exhibition games were held, more than this year's, with the total number of spectators standing at 228,329.

The average number of spectators was 7,661, the highest ever in terms of the year tallied. It surpassed the 7,470 mark set in 2012.

According to NHN Link, a reservation service company, as of 11 a.m. on the 15th, the number of simultaneous access to ticket links reached about 200,000, more than double that of 90,000 last year.

There is also a high possibility that all games of the opening game will be sold out for the third consecutive year following the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

The biggest change is the official introduction of pitch clock from this season.

Pitchers must pitch within 20 seconds when no runners are present, and within 25 seconds when no runners are present. Batters must enter the batter's box within 33 seconds, and the number of timeouts per batter's box is up to two innings.

In addition, the ABS strike zone was lowered by 0.6% from last year.

Another noticeable change is to reduce the overtime, which lasted until the 12th inning of the regular season, to the 11th inning.

A total of 720 regular season games, 144 games per team, will be played. Three consecutive games will be played after the opening two games. The All-Star game will be held at Hanwha Life Insurance Ballpark in Daejeon on July 12.