Korea overpowers China 22-2 to trigger 5th-inning mercy rule

Korea’s Kim Ha-seong rounds the bases after hitting a grand slam in the fifth inning of a game against China at the 2023 World Baseball Classic at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo on Monday. [NEWS1]

Korea left the 2023 World Baseball Classic early and disappointed on Monday night, but at least they left in style – as the first team in the tournament to trigger the five-inning mercy rule with a huge 22-2 win over China.

Playing only for pride with both teams already knocked out of the tournament, Korea tore through China at Tokyo Dome, scoring in every inning as what started as a fairly evenly matched game quickly descended into a massacre.

Korea put up two runs at the top of the first, only for China to tie things up quickly at the bottom of the inning.

Korea returned with two more runs in the second to take the score to 4-2, then posted a huge eighth-inning third to take the score to 12-2, with six more runs in the fourth pushing it to 18-2.

An understandingly demoralized China, meanwhile, looked less and less confident at the plate in the face of their worst loss of the tournament yet.

Korea’s Park Kun-woo and Kim Ha-seong provided the majority of the fireworks, smashing a grand slam each in the fourth and fifth innings.

Under WBC rules, a game is ended early if one team is leading by 15 runs or more at the end of the fifth inning, or by 10 runs or more at the end of the seventh inning.

While the seven-inning mercy rule has already been triggered a number of times at this year’s WBC – including when Australia beat China 12-2 – Monday marks the first time a game has been called in the fifth inning.

As well as triggering the mercy rule, Korea also posted the most runs scored by any team in a single game in the tournament, surpassing Canada’s 18 runs in their 18-8 win over Great Britain a day earlier.

The big win comes as some consolation for the Korean side, who leave the World Baseball Classic after a disappointing tournament that saw the supposed world No. 4 team lose their opening game to Australia and never truly recover.

Korea posted the expected loss to Japan and went on to beat the Czech Republic and now China, but the damage was already done and it is Australia, not Korea, that advances alongside Japan to the knockout stage.

Korea leaves the WBC with some serious questions to answer about the future of baseball in the country, and in particular player development.

Pitching has been an emphatically obvious concern at the WBC, with Korea’s bullpen collapsing in every single one of their games with embarrassing predictability.

While a nice note to end the tournament on for the Korean team, the complete destruction of China does not change the overall story of the WBC for Korea – on a national level, Korean baseball has failed to advance in recent years and is no longer as competitive as it is generally thought to be.

With their WBC journey now over, the Korean team are set to fly back to Korea on Tuesday afternoon.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]