KIA, Kiwoom, and hope for a fall baseball
from web site
KIA Tigers won a big victory with Yang Hyun-jong's eight scoreless innings and continued their glimmer of hope for autumn baseball.
KIA won 11-0 in the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League home game, which brought the Kiwoom Heroes to Kia Champions Field in Gwangju on the 11th.
The sixth-ranked KIA continued its challenge to the wild card with four games left in the season. Ahead of the two consecutive games against the NC Dinos in Gwangju from the 16th to the 17th, KIA needs to catch both the Lotte Giants on the 12th and the Doosan Bears on the 13th to aim for a miracle.
KIA starter Yang Hyun-jong tied Kiwoom's batters to six sporadic hits and zero runs and won his eighth win (11 losses). Yang Hyun-jong was ahead of his first shutout victory this year, but unfortunately handed over the mound to Kim Seung-hyun in the ninth inning as the number of pitches increased in the top of the eighth inning. Yang Hyun-jong had three consecutive hits after one out, but finished the eighth inning without losing a point with Kim Hye-sung and Ronnie Dawson as errors.
Yang Hyun-jong increased his pitching innings for the season to 164 innings, leaving six innings to achieve 170 innings for the ninth consecutive year that he is most attached to.
KIA scored six runs thanks to Kiwoom's error march in the second inning, which is 0-0, to win early. KIA, which scored two points taking advantage of Kiwoom shortstop Kim Hwi-jip's grounder to third base with no outs, widened the gap to 4-0 with Kim Do-young's grounder and Ko Jong-wook's hit.
Kiwoom left fielder Park Chan-hyuk then missed Kim Sun-bin's ordinary fly ball and continued the opportunity, then tied the bases with a hit by Socrates Brito and scored the sixth point due to an error by Kiwoom third baseman Song Sung-moon, who missed Lee Woo-sung's grounder and Kim Tae-gun's grounder. In the fifth inning with a 7-0 lead, Kim Do-young's heavy hit and Socrates' double added four runs.
KIA Kim Sun-bin hit an infield hit in the third inning to achieve 1,500 hits for the 44th time in history.
In Busan, Lotte, which was eliminated from the postseason competition, scored 17 hits to crush Doosan, which is busy, 14-3 and laughed hard in its last home game.
Lotte broke the balance with Yoo Kang-nam's solo arch to the left in the bottom of the second inning when it was 1-1 and pulled down Doosan starter Choi Won-jun with Roh Jin-hyuk's RBI timely hit.
He then tied eight hits, including three doubles, and two four outs, against Doosan relief Park Shin-ji in the third to fourth innings to score five runs to determine the victory or defeat.
Doosan actually raised its white flag when it scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning when it was trailing 3-8. Doosan, ranked fifth, was chased by KIA by two games.
Meanwhile, heroes from the Hangzhou Asian Games took to the mound in Busan and Gwangju and threw the first pitch.
Fencing gold medalist Yoon Ji-soo, the daughter of Lotte legend Yoon Hak-gil, announced the start of the Doosan-Lotte game, and in Gwangju, high school amateur Yoo Hyun-jo, who strongly wanted to pitch the KIA game as a silver member of the women's golf team, made her wish come true.
