SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Baseball’s top-ranked LG Twins swept the first game of a doubleheader against the second-place KT Wiz to consolidate their lead.
LG won 4-0 against KT in the 2023 Shinhan Bank SOL KBO League at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul on Sunday.
With their third straight win, LG improved to 79-2-48 on the season and extended their lead over second-place KT (73-3-57) to 7.5 games. The magic number to win the regular season title is now eight.
LG starter Casey Kelly picked up his 10th win of the season (7-0) with seven innings of five-hit, no walks and two strikeouts. Kelly, who has been in the KBO since 2019, has recorded double-digit wins for five straight years.
With the score tied at 0-0 in the bottom of the fourth, LG scored the game-winning run on an infield single by Moon Sung-joo with runners on first and third.
After adding one more run in the fifth, LG sealed the game in the bottom of the eighth with back-to-back RBI singles by Moon Sung-joo and Park Hae-min.
KT, which had a “bullpen day” by sending out reliever Joo Ju-kwon to start, was unable to secure the win as the bats went silent.
The second pitcher, Ha Jun-ho, suffered his first loss of the season with two runs in three innings.
In Changwon, the third-place NC Dinos avenged their previous day’s loss with a 7-0 sweep of the KIA Tigers.
NC moved to 69 wins, 2 ties, and 56 losses to trail second-place KT by 1.5 games.
Meanwhile, sixth-placed KIA, who have a long way to go, dropped a game with the defeat, closing the gap to fifth-placed SSG Landers (64W3D62L).
NC was led at the plate by the first through third lines of Son Ah-seop, Park Min-woo, and Park Gun-woo, who each had two hits apiece. Ahn Jung-yeol, the No. 8 hitter, also did his part, going 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs.
Starting pitcher Song Myung-ki pitched five innings of five-hit ball, striking out two and walking none to earn his fourth win of the season.
Koo Chang-mo, who was cut from the national team ahead of his Asian Games call-up, pitched 2 1/3 innings of scoreless relief with one walk and one strikeout.
KIA starter Mario Sanchez was tagged for four runs in five innings to fall to 3-3 on the season.
In Daejeon, the Samsung Lions defeated the Hanwha Eagles 11-3.
Samsung snapped a five-game losing streak and improved to 54-1-74 on the season (9th place). The gap to eighth-place Hanwha (52-6-71) is now 0.5 games. 온라인카지노
Hanwha has lost four straight games.
Samsung was led at the plate by Koo Ja-rook’s “five-hit game” of 3-for-3 with a home run and two walks.
In Incheon, the Doosan Bears and SSG Landers battled to a hard-fought 7-7 tie. The first game of the doubleheader was decided in the ninth inning without extra innings.
Doosan’s Yang Seok-hwan hit a grand slam in the seventh inning to give him 20 home runs for the third consecutive season and the most against any team in baseball, but it came up short.
SSG rallied from a 7-3 deficit in the bottom of the eighth with a three-run homer by Choo Shin-soo, and then Han Yoo-seom hit a tying solo shot in the bottom of the ninth.
Doosan remained in fourth and fifth place with 67 wins and 2 losses and SSG with 64 wins and 3 losses, respectively.
Meanwhile, professional baseball will be playing doubleheaders at all four stadiums today. After the first game of the doubleheader, the second game will start 30 minutes later.
