Twins enter All-Star break in first place with Landers, Bears in pursuit

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Twins enter All-Star break in first place with Landers, Bears in pursuit

Published: 14 Jul. 2023, 17:37

Shin Min-jae of the LG Twins, right, celebrates after hitting a single against the Hanwha Eagles during a game at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

The LG Twins entered the All-Star break on Friday in a comfortable first place, sitting a solid 2.5 games ahead of the reigning champion SSG Landers with the rest of the pack trailing some distance behind.

The Twins enter the break just shy of the 50-win mark, hitting 49 wins, 30 losses and two ties with just one game able to be played due to heavy rain in the final week going into the break.

The Landers, who spent most of the first half of the season either in first place or a game or two behind, now trail by 2.5 games after dropping seven of their last 10 following a particularly rough spell.

The Landers have managed two games less than the Twins going into the break, with a total of 79, recording 46 wins, 32 losses and one tie.

But while the Twins and Landers both enter the All-Star break on the back of back-to-back losses, the third-place Doosan Bears enter their week off in the midst of a nine-game winning streak.

Two weeks of wins puts the bears comfortably in third place, four games behind the Landers but 2.5 in front of the fourth-place NC Dinos, marginally narrowing what has looked like an insurmountable gap between the top two and everybody else.

The Bears still trail the leading pair by some distance, but the Seoul club has now waded into that no-man’s land and if they are able to continue their momentum after a week off, they could be in with a chance of chasing down the Landers.

Behind the Bears things are very tight. Just 4.5 games separate the Dinos, fifth-place Lotte Giants, sixth-place Kia Tigers, seventh-place KT Wiz, eighth-place Hanwha Eagles and ninth-place Kiwoom Heroes, with the huge difference in number of games played only complicating thigs further — the Tigers have only played 76, 10 fewer than the Heroes’ 86.

As the only club in Korea with a domed stadium, the Heroes face far fewer rain cancelations than other KBO teams. That left them as the only team to play all three games going into the break, although the team probably would have preferred a few cancelations — after losing 4-2, 4-3, 9-0 to the Wiz, the Heroes enter the All-Star break on a seven-game losing streak.

Trailing well behind the Heroes in 10th place lie what remains of the Samsung Lions, the Daegu club now a full five games behind everybody else and 18.5 games behind the Twins with just 31 wins and 49 losses on their line so far this season.

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