South Korean baseball club Hanwha Eagles on Tuesday named a former franchise star as their new manager.

The Korea Baseball Organization club said Han Yong-duk will take over as manager on a three-year contract worth 1.2 billion won ($1.07 million), including a signing bonus of 300 million won. Han had been the bench coach for the Doosan Bears since 2015.

The Eagles missed the postseason for the 10th consecutive season in 2017, finishing eighth among 10 clubs with 61 wins, 81 losses and two ties. 

They fired manager Kim Sung-keun on May 23 and finished the season out with pitching coach Lee Sang-kun as interim manager.

Han, 52, spent his entire 17-year pitching career with the Eagles, going 120-118 with 24 saves and posting a 3.54 ERA in 482 appearances from 1988 to 2004.

He ranks fifth all-time with 2,080 innings pitched.

The former right-hander retired after the 2004 season and began working as a scout for the Eagles. He then took over as their pitching coach in 2006.

Han began the 2012 season as the bench coach and handled the interim managerial role for 28 games after manager Han Dae-hwa was fired. He had been considered for the full-time manager job after that season and again in 2014, but the Eagles chose different candidates each time.

Han moved to the Bears before the 2015 season, and helped the club win two consecutive Korean Series as their bench coach.

"It's great to be coming back to my hometown team," Han said of the club based in Daejeon, some 160 kilometers south of Seoul. "This team has a lot of talented players and promising prospects. I can't wait to meet the players and front office and start getting ready for next year." (Yonhap)