Hanwha Eagles will part with manager Kim Kyung-moon after ninth-place season

The Hanwha Eagles said on October 10 that manager Kim Kyung-moon will leave the South Korean baseball club when his three-year contract expires at the end of the 2026 season. Kim confirmed before the team’s final regular-season game in Daejeon that he would not return next year. The move leaves Hanwha looking for a new manager after a fall to ninth place, a year after reaching the Korean Series.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the club said it was looking to hire a replacement and thanked Kim for his service. Neither Yonhap nor SBS News identified a successor or reported a timetable for an appointment. The announcement concerns the end of Kim’s contract; the reports do not establish that he was dismissed before the season ended.

What Kim Kyung-moon said before his last game

Kim spoke before Hanwha’s scheduled October 10 home game against the NC Dinos at Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark. SBS reported that he personally expressed his intention to step down. Yonhap quoted him telling reporters: ‘This will be my last game here. I am really sorry to our fans that we have lost so many games.’

Kim also said he felt bad about leaving without having made the team better, Yonhap reported. He thanked the players, coaches and front-office staff who had worked with him. His remarks came with Hanwha’s ninth-place finish already settled, though the final game had yet to be played when the cited reports gave the team’s record.

How Hanwha fell from a Korean Series run to ninth

The contrast with 2025 is sharp. In Kim’s first full season after taking over in June 2024, the Eagles finished second in the regular season with an 83-57-4 record. They then made their first Korean Series appearance since 2006, losing to the LG Twins in five games. That run was Kim’s fifth runner-up finish as a manager, according to both Yonhap and SBS.

Yonhap’s season figures show that scoring was not Hanwha’s main problem in 2026: the Eagles led the KBO with 175 home runs and 813 runs. Their pitching staff, however, had a 5.27 earned run average, the league’s second-worst. In 2025, Hanwha’s 3.55 ERA had been the best in the league. Those figures describe the team’s performance; the club’s announcement did not give a detailed explanation for its decision beyond moving on when Kim’s contract expires.

One change in the pitching staff was the departure of Cody Ponce and Ryan Weiss for Major League Baseball. Yonhap reported that the pair combined for 33 wins and 459 strikeouts for Hanwha in 2025 and that their replacements did not fill the gap. SBS likewise cited difficulties with foreign pitchers and instability among key relief pitchers in its account of the team’s disappointing season.

Kim’s record and Hanwha’s next appointment

Kim entered the scheduled final game with 1,078 regular-season wins, 957 losses and 39 ties as a KBO manager, Yonhap reported. SBS traced his five Korean Series runner-up finishes to 2005, 2007 and 2008 with the Doosan Bears, 2016 with the NC Dinos, and 2025 with Hanwha. Despite that record of reaching the championship series, he has not won a Korean Series title.

Hanwha’s next decision is the managerial appointment. Yonhap reported only that the club was looking for a new manager; the available reports give no candidate or appointment date. They also do not give the result of the October 10 game. The confirmed change is that Kim will not return after his contract expires, with the Eagles seeking someone else to lead them after their ninth-place finish.