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| Dustin Nippert |
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| Zach Stewart |
The NC Dinos are set to face the Doosan Bears in the best of seven Korean Series starting Saturday.
The Dinos won three games first in their games against the Twins, advancing to the Korean Series. This is the first time that the new club, which was founded in 2011, competes in the final postseason series.
The question is whether the Dinos, who were runners-up in the regular season with 83 wins and 58 defeats, can continue their sweeping upturn in their forthcoming games against the Bears in the championship series.
Experts say the determining factor of the 2016 Korean Series will be pitchers.
The Bears are in an advantageous position in starting pitchers. The four pitchers_ Dustin Nippert, Michael Bowden, Yu Hui-kwan and Jang Won-jun_ are widely cited as the key drivers for the Bears' victories during the regular season. The Bears achieved 93 wins with 50 defeats during the season.
The Bears are the first Korean baseball club to have four pitchers simultaneously having reached 15 wins or more. Nippert won 22 games, followed by Bowden with 18. Yu and Jang tied at 15 wins each.
If the Bears win the 2016 Korean Series, they will be the first team since 1995 to lead the regular season in wins and also win the final postseason playoffs.
Choi Won-ho, a baseball analyst for SBS Sports Plus, says the NC Dinos will not be an easy team to beat because of their solid bullpen.
"The Dinos have a stronger bullpen than the Bears," he said. "Thus, the role of relief pitcher Lee Hyun-seung will be critical in determining the fate of the Bears. His pitching will have a considerable impact on his team's overall performance in the Korean Series."
Lee pitched in 56 games during the regular season with one win and four defeats. His earned run average stands at 4.84 and he had 41 strikeouts.
Choi said infielder Kim Jae-hwan is another key player whose performance could also make or break the Bears in the championship series.
Kim, 28, rose to stardom during the 2016 regular season, eight years after he made his debut as a professional baseball player. He was one of the players expected to become a strong slugger. However, it took time for him to prove himself in the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) as his performance has not been consistent.
Kim hit a home run in the team's opening game against the Dinos in the 2016 regular season and proved himself an asset to the Bears.
He played in 134 games with a .325 batting average, hitting 37 home runs. He had 160 hits out of 492 at-bats and 107 runs batted in.
Compared to the Bears, the Dinos don't have such a lineup of starting pitchers. Eric Hacker and Zach Stewart are two reliable pitchers to start games. But there are no Korean pitchers for the Dinos when the two foreign pitchers are unavailable. During the game against the Twins in the playoffs, Dinos' manager Kim Gyeong-mun gave Jang Hyun-sik an opportunity to prove himself as a starting pitcher. But he was replaced after one inning.
Manager Kim reportedly mulls over less experienced pitchers, such as Koo Chang-mo and Choi Keum-kang, as alternative starting pitchers. However, their ball control is not consistent, troubling Kim in his selection of starters.
The shortage of starting pitchers have become a headache for the Dinos because its starting pitcher Lee Jae-hak was eliminated from the roster of pitchers for the Korean Series over his alleged involvement in a fraud scandal.
Earlier, the police investigated several baseball players, including Lee, for their alleged involvement in fixing the scores of ball games. Lee is suspected of allowing four balls in the first inning of the 2014 regular season to manipulate his team's score. He allegedly received a certain amount of cash in return for deliberately poor pitching, an allegation Lee denied.
The police plan to reveal the results of its investigation after the Korean Series. On Wednesday, the Dinos announced they would exclude the controversial pitcher from the roster for the final postseason series.
Lee pitched in the 2014 opening game and had 10 wins for three straight years up to last year. His suspension for the Korean Series has narrowed manager Kim's choices of starting pitchers.
Outfielder Na Sung-bum is the other player who will determine the fate of the Dinos in the Series. Manager Kim called Na the key player behind his team's win in the playoffs, though his performance in the first three games was lackluster. He made one hit on 13 at-bats. His role was critical in the fourth game against the Twins. He made two hits on 5 at-bats.
Some analysts cite manager Kim's Korean Series trauma as one of the factors casting a shadow on the Dinos' win in the Korean Series.
As a manager, he led the Bears in 2005, 2007 and 2008. The Bears advanced to the Korean Series during those years but never won it.
