The South Korean baseball club Lotte Giants announced Monday their manager Larry Sutton has stepped down for health reasons.
The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) team said Sutton offered to quit following the Giants' 2-1 loss to the KT Wiz on Sunday, and added they decided to honor Sutton's wish.
The Giants added that their bench coach Lee Jong-un will serve as interim manager for the rest of the season beginning Tuesday against the Hanwha Eagles. Lee previously managed the Giants for one season in 2015. Lee started the season as the Giants' minor league manager but was named bench coach in June in coaching staff changes.
Sutton, 53, was first hired by the Giants as minor league skipper in October 2019. He took over the KBO club in May 2021 after the Giants sacked Her Mun-hoe while stuck in last place.
The Giants went on to finish in eighth place among 10 teams in 2021, and also ended up in eighth place in 2022 despite a strong start to the season.
It has been much the same story so far in 2023. The Giants were in third place at the end of May at 27-17, just two games out of first place. Since June 1, however, they have only gone 23-41, the worst record in the KBO in that span, to slide to seventh place.
The Giants have lost seven straight games to fall five games out of the fifth and final postseason spot with 36 games left this season.
Sutton missed a game on Aug. 17 with what the Giants said was dizziness, and the same symptoms kept him out of Sunday's game before the American skipper called it quits.
According to the Giants, Sutton called general manager Sung Min-kyu on Sunday night to tell him he would no longer be able to carry on as manager, and the team accepted the resignation offer Monday morning.
Sutton's resignation leaves the KBO without a foreign manager for the first time since 2019.
In May this year, the Hanwha Eagles fired their Venezuelan manager Carlos Subero, who had been in charge since 2021.
Before Subero and Sutton, there had been three foreign-born managers in the KBO.
Jerry Royster managed the Giants from 2008 to 2010, guiding them to the postseason in each of those three years without winning a title.
Trey Hillman was the most successful one of the bunch, leading the SK Wyverns to the 2018 Korean Series title in his second year in charge. Hillman announced before the start of the postseason that year that he would leave the KBO and return to the United States to be closer to his family.
Former major league All-Star Matt Williams ran the ship for the Kia Tigers from 2020 to 2021, but failed to lead them to the postseason in either of those seasons. Williams was let go with one year remaining on his contract.
Under Subero, the Eagles finished in last place in 2021 and 2022, and were in ninth place when they fired him during the final season of his three-year contract.
Sutton had the lowest winning percentage in the group at .349 (106-198-15 in wins-losses-ties).
Sutton, a former major leaguer, played in the KBO from 2005 to 2007, and led the league with 35 home runs in his first season here.
Source: Yonhap News Agency