Choi Won-ho, manager for the struggling South Korean baseball club Hanwha Eagles, has resigned.

The Eagles announced Monday that Choi had first expressed his intention to quit following an 8-4 loss to the LG Twins on Thursday, and the club accepted it Sunday.

Along with Choi, Park Chan-hyuk, CEO of the Eagles, also stepped down to take the fall for the club’s poor performance of late.

The Eagles said bench coach Chung Kyoung-bae will serve as interim manager but added, “We’ll hire a new manager at the earliest date possible.”

Choi, 51, was in the second season of his three-year, 1.4 billion-won ($1.02 million) contract signed in May last year, when he took over from Carlos Subero.

The Eagles entered the 2024 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season with postseason aspirations after perennial 추천 rebuilding had kept them at or near the bottom of the 10-team standings for five years running. Between 2008 and 2018, they only reached the postseason once.

They began this season by winning seven of their first eight games but have since gone 14-28-1 (wins-losses-ties) to drop from first place to eighth place through Sunday’s action at 21-29-1 overall.

Thursday’s loss, after which Choi tendered his resignation, had dropped the Eagles to last place for the first time this season.

Choi is the first manager to be replaced in the KBO this season.

The Eagles have made some significant offseason signings in recent winters to augment their young core with veterans, and none was bigger than their reunion with left-handed pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin, the 2019 National League All-Star and major league ERA champion, in February this year.