S. Korea falls to Japan for 1st loss in baseball

NAGOYA, Japan — The four-time defending champion South Korea was shut out by Japan 5-0 for its first loss in the Asian Games baseball tournament on Friday.

Made up of stars of the top domestic league, the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), South Korea managed just four hits against a Japanese team of amateurs to begin the Super Round at Toyohashi Municipal Baseball Stadium in Toyohashi, some 85 kilometers southeast of the main host city, Nagoya.

Both teams had won all three matches in the preliminary stage to qualify for the Super Round, joined by Chinese Taipei and China.

Counting its win over Chinese Taipei in the group phase, South Korea's Super Round record now stands at 1-1, while Japan, which earlier beat China in the group round, improved to 2-0.

On Friday, South Korea will play China, while Japan will take on Chinese Taipei.

Should both South Korea and Japan win Friday, then they will meet for the gold medal on Sunday in Toyohashi.

However, if only South Korea wins and Japan loses to Chinese Taipei, then those three teams will finish with an identical 2-1 record. In that case, the teams will go to a tiebreaking formula called Team Quality Balance (TQB) to determine who will reach the gold medal game. TQB is the sum of runs scored divided by the number of offensive innings, minus the number of runs allowed divided by the number of defensive inning.

South Korea had no answer against the lefty starter Shin Higuchi, who scattered four hits across seven innings and struck out four.

South Korea grounded into three double plays in the loss -- by Roh Si-hwan in the first and then in the fourth inning, and Yoon Dong-hee in the fifth inning.

South Korean starter So Hyeong-jun allowed three runs on four hits in three innings of work.

With runners at first and second in the bottom third, Motoki Mukoyama doubled down the left field line to cash in Japan's first run.

After a groundout scored another Japanese run, shortstop Kim Ju-won's throwing error pushed Japan's lead to 3-0.

Reliever Jo Byeong-hyeon was charged with two runs in relief in the sixth inning.

South Korea manager Ryu Ji-hyun said he did not expect to end up in a possible tiebreaking situation.

This was the second game in which South Korea's bats were silenced by a left-handed pitcher. In the first game of the tournament, South Korea eked out just one unearned run and one hit in five innings against Lin Yi-wei of Chinese Taipei.

"We knew left-handers for both Japan and Chinese Taipei would be the aces, and we tried to prepare accordingly. The game just didn't go our way today," Ryu said. "When we were getting ready for this game, we never once thought about having to crunch numbers. We were hoping to win both games in the Super Round to get to the final."