Kia Tigers players celebrate their win against the LG Twins at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Songpa District, southern Seoul, on Oct. 4.KIA TIGERS
The Kia Tigers scored three runs in the ninth inning to beat the LG Twins 6-5 on Sunday and move past them into third place in the KBO standings, deepening the slump of an LG team that has now lost seven straight.
Kia trailed 5-3 heading into the ninth at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul before rallying for the win. Fourth before the game, it swapped places with LG. Kia now has a .548 winning percentage, just ahead of LG's .547.
Under the KBO's stepladder postseason format, third place offers big advantages. The third-place team skips the wild card series, in which the fourth- and fifth-place teams face off, and advances straight to the semi-playoffs. That lets it save its ace and regroup after the regular season ends. This year, the stakes are higher because the fifth-place Doosan Bears have Gwak Been, the league's top ace, an opponent no team wants to face in its first postseason series.
The race for third is likely to go down to the final day. Kia has seven games left, and LG has six, and two of those games are between the two teams. After Sunday's game, the final game of their three-game series at Jamsil, they will meet one last time in Gwangju on Monday, the last day of the regular season.
Coming off Kia's win over LG on Saturday, the two teams played a seesaw game on Sunday that was as intense as any postseason matchup. LG kept taking the lead with home runs, and Kia kept catching up.
LG's Austin Dean struck first with a two-run homer in the bottom of the first. It was his 40th home run of the season, making him the third player in the league to reach 40 this year. He is the first player in the history of the LG franchise, including its predecessor, the MBC Blue Dragons, to hit 40 home runs in a season.
Kia Tigers' Jeon Sang-hyun is on the field on Oct. 4 at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Songpa District, southern Seoul.KIA TIGERS
Kia tied the game at 2-2 on a two-run single by Park Min in the top of the second, but LG's Lee Jae-won put LG back ahead 3-2 with a towering solo home run to left that traveled 133 meters (436 feet). The ball left the bat at 192 kilometers per hour (119 miles per hour), faster than this season's MLB record for exit velocity, 186 kilometers per hour.
Kia's Na Sung-bum tied the game again with an RBI single in the top of the eighth. Park Dong-won's two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth gave LG a 5-3 lead, but Kia put pressure on LG's struggling bullpen in the ninth with a walk and three straight hits to complete the dramatic comeback.
The loss leaves LG facing a bullpen problem as big as the defeat itself. Closer Son Ju-young, who has 30 saves this season, has struggled in three straight games. He gave up four runs in the bottom of the ninth against the SSG Landers on Wednesday and allowed the deciding run against Kia on Saturday, taking the loss in back-to-back games. On Sunday, he came in to protect the lead with two outs and a runner on first in the top of the eighth but gave up the tying run, and he was eventually pulled in the middle of the ninth.
Kia has put out the immediate fire, but its bullpen is shaky as well. After Lee Eui-lee, who served as closer in the second half of the season, became noticeably unstable, the team switched to a closer-by-committee approach in late September. "Every bullpen pitcher is on standby for up to three straight days," Kia manager Lee Bum-ho said before the series against LG. On Sunday, Jeon Sang-hyun, who threw 35 pitches the day before, pitched the ninth and protected the one-run lead.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
