KBO season to resume this week with rare 4-game series
Moon Hyun-bin of the Hanwha Eagles, center, is mobbed by teammates after hitting a walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth inning of a Korea Baseball Organization regular-season game against the Kia Tigers at Daejeon Hanwha Life Eagles Park in Daejeon, in this photo provided by the Eagles, July 10. Yonhap
When the 10 clubs in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) return for the second half of their season Thursday, they will be in for a rare four-game series.
The teams are still enjoying their expanded, six-day All-Star break, which began last Friday and will end Wednesday. The same opponents that faced each other for the two-game series on the opening weekend in March will be back at it for four games from Thursday to Sunday — weather permitting.
The Hanwha Eagles, at 52-33-2 (wins-losses-ties), hold a 4 1/2-game lead over the LG Twins (48-38-2) in first place. The Eagles, winners of six straight games, are the first team to reach 50 wins this year, and historically, teams that get to the 50-win mark first have gone on to capture the regular-season title about 71 percent of the time and win the Korean Series championship about 60 percent of the time.
The Eagles will visit fifth-place KT Wiz (45-41-3) in Suwon, some 30 kilometers south of Seoul. The Wiz are part of a crowded middle class, with clubs ranked from fourth to eighth only separated by three games.
The 2024 champion Kia Tigers lead that group in fourth place at 45-40-3. They limped to the All-Star break on a four-game losing streak, which cost them a chance to crack the top three after a slow start to their title defense. The Tigers will host seventh-ranked NC Dinos (40-40-5) in Gwangju, about 270 kilometers south of Seoul. The Dinos won their final four games of the first half.
Three of those wins came at the expense of the Samsung Lions, who fell from fifth to eighth at 43-44-1. They will try to right the ship when they host last-place Kiwoom Heroes (27-61-3) in the southeastern city of Daegu this week.
The SSG Landers (43-41-3), trying to hang with postseason hopefuls in sixth place, will host ninth-ranked Doosan Bears (36-49-3), whose postseason hopes have been fading.
The Twins will bring home the Lotte Giants (47-39-3) in a battle between No. 2- and No. 3-ranked clubs.
When the season starts again, a few players will also resume their pursuit of KBO records.
Eagles ace Cody Ponce is leading the league with 161 strikeouts after 18 starts and has struck out 12.53 batters per nine innings. He is just 65 Ks shy of breaking the single-season record, set by former Doosan Bears starter Ariel Miranda in 2021, with at least 10 starts remaining.
Ponce is undefeated at 11-0, three victories away from setting the record for most consecutive wins by a pitcher from the start of a season.
Giants outfielder Victor Reyes, who leads the league with 122 hits after 89 games, could break his own single-season record of 202 hits set in 2024. He is on pace for 197 this year, but a second-half push as strong as the one last year, when he averaged 1.45 hits per game over his final 64 contests, could get him over the hump.
Lions slugger Lewin Diaz is tops with 29 home runs and needs 21 dingers over his final 56 games to become the first foreign player in league history to launch 50 home runs in a season.
Three South Korean players have topped the 50-homer mark, and former Lions infielder Yamaico Navarro holds the record for most homers by a foreign player with 48 in the 2015 season.
Landers third baseman Choi Jeong is the all-time home run king with 506, and he is nine away from his 10th consecutive 20-home run campaign. It would break a tie with Park Byung-ho of the Lions for the longest such streak in KBO history.