Tigers ace Oller makes strong KBO postseason debut
Kia Tigers starter Adam Oller celebrates after completing the top of the sixth inning of Game 2 of the first round in the Korea Baseball Organization postseason against the LG Twins at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field in Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City, Sunday. Yonhap
JEONNAM-GWANGJU SPECIAL METROPOLITAN CITY — Kia Tigers starting pitcher Adam Oller made his first South Korean postseason game a memorable one Sunday.
The American right-hander limited the LG Twins to two runs on six hits in six innings while striking out eight, helping the Tigers prevail 6-3 in Game 2 of the teams' best-of-five series in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason.
In the regular season, Oller finished second in the KBO with a 3.13 ERA and fourth with 180 strikeouts. And he picked up where he left off in his first KBO postseason outing.
After Oller worked a clean top of the first inning, his teammates staked him to a 5-0 lead in the bottom first — knocking out Oller's counterpart, Im Chan-kyu, with six hits, including three doubles.
After sitting on the bench for several minutes, Oller came back out and struck out two in a perfect second inning.
The Tigers' bats cooled off after that first inning and the Twins tried to creep back into the contest.
But Oller kept wiggling his way out of jams, while also getting some help from his defense.
Oller allowed three straight hits in the third inning as the Twins scored their first run. But with two outs, catcher Han Jun-su gunned down Park Hae-min at first base to snuff out the Twins rally, after alertly noticing Park straying far off the bag.
Oller gave up his second run of the game in the fifth but also recorded two strikeouts in that inning and retired Song Chan-eui, who had homered in Saturday's Game 1, to a harmless pop out to minimize the damage.
Oller then struck out the side in the sixth, getting all three Ks with his slider. Overall, six of his eight strikeouts came on sliders.
The starter threw 94 pitches, 61 for strikes. He mixed in 38 four-seam fastballs, 37 sliders, 12 changeups, three cutters, three curveballs and one two-seam fastball.
The Twins created some traffic on the bases after Oller left the game but the Tigers' bullpen hung on to make a winner out of the starter. Closer Jeon Sang-hyun got the final four outs for the save, including a key strikeout of Lee Jae-won with two men on in the eighth inning.
Oller, who celebrated his 32nd birthday Saturday, said getting five runs of support from the first inning was "a great birthday gift."
"This season, I didn't get the most run support. And our offense putting up five runs hopefully put an end to that completely," Oller deadpanned. "I appreciated that. I love getting wins on my birthday or the day after. So it was a lot of fun."
Including the regular season, this was Oller's sixth meeting against the Twins this year. Oller said he did not try to do anything different against a familiar foe.
"When you face a team so many times, you kind of have a general idea on what lineup they are going to put out there against you, how those guys hit off of you, what they look for, how they approach you," Oller said. "So my biggest focus the day before when James (Naile) was pitching was just seeing where their swings were at and checking their timing on offspeed pitches and fastballs.
"I tried to treat this as any other game," he continued. "I tried obviously yesterday to take everything in and get to see how everything was feeling. And then going into today, it was just lock in and attack."