Lotte Giants combine for no-hitter as LG Twins cement lead

Baseball

Published: 07 Aug. 2023, 15:10 Updated: 07 Aug. 2023, 17:49

Lotte Giants combine for no-hitter as LG Twins cement lead

Police watch the crowd during a game between the Samsung Lions and LG Twins at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu on Sunday after an anonymous threat was posted online. [NEWS1]

The LG Twins rode a midweek sweep to extend their lead at the top of the KBO last week, pulling 4.5 games ahead of the SSG Landers as the NC Dinos and KT Wiz leapfrogged the Doosan Bears to take third and fourth.

The Twins swept the Kiwoom Heroes last week, winning 4-2, 6-4, 5-4 to hand the struggling ninth place side their third, fourth and fifth losses of what is now an eight-game losing streak.

The Twins failed to ride that momentum into the weekend, losing 5-4 to the last-place Samsung Lions on Friday and 6-3 on Saturday, with a consolation 7-4 win on Sunday still not enough to save the series.

That Sunday game was played with a heavy police presence throughout Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu after anonymous threats were made online of a possible knife attack at the stadium. The game continued as scheduled with police and military support.

Despite the tough end to the week, the Heroes sweep was still enough to extend the Twins’ lead from 2.5 games last week to 4.5 games this week as the trailing Landers and then-third-place Bears faced even bigger issues.

The Landers were the victims of the only other midweek sweep, barely putting up a fight as the Wiz beat them 8-0, 7-0, 3-1. The reigning champions rallied on Friday, beating the seventh-place Lotte Giants 4-1 and adding a 9-6 win on Saturday to take the series despite a 1-0 loss on Sunday.

That Sunday game may have been a low-scoring affair, but it earned a spot in the history books as Lotte’s Aaron Wilkerson, Koo Seung-min and Kim Won-jun combined to become the third team in KBO history to throw a combined no-hitter.

The Bears snapped what had been a five-game losing streak to beat the eighth-place Hanwha Eagles in their midweek series — 8-3, 4-1, 2-5 — before dropping a series to the resurgent Wiz with a 4-3 loss on Friday, a 7-4 win on Saturday and a 3-1 loss in the rubber match on Sunday.

The Dinos rode a solid week into third place, beating the Giants two games to one in the midweek series — 6-3, 3-6, 8-1 — and sweeping the Heroes over the weekend — 4-2, 4-3, 12-7.

The sixth-place Kia Tigers also had a solid week, beating the Lions 11-8 on Tuesday and 12-8 on Thursday to take the series despite a tight 7-6 loss in the middle, and then stringing together back-to-back 9-3 wins against the Eagles to lock in a series victory over the weekend with a 4-4 tie over 12 innings on Sunday.

After bunching up ahead of the All Star break, the KBO is now split into five distinct groups, with the Twins and Landers both sitting along at the top of the table, 4.5 games separating the Twins from the Landers, and another four games separating the Landers from everyone else.

The Dinos, Wiz, Bears and Tigers then sit in the third group straddling the postseason cutoff, with just two games separating the two teams.

Three and a half games back from the Tigers are the Giants and Eagles, separated by a couple of games, with the Heroes and Lions trailing at the very bottom of the pack, 2.5 games behind the Eagles and a full 19 games behind the Twins.

The KBO returns Tuesday with the clash between the second-place Landers and third-place Dinos in Incheon likely to be the hottest ticket. The rest of the games are fairly mixed, with the Twins facing the Tigers, the Bears taking on the Eagles, the Bears playing the Lions and the Giants visiting the Heroes in western Seoul.

Moving into the weekend, Suwon will play host to a third-fourth clash between the Dinos and Wiz, while the Twins play the Heroes in southern Seoul, the Lions visit the Landers in Incheon, the Hears and Eagles face off in Daejeon and the Tigers and Giants meet in Busan.

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