Daegu: The NC Dinos defeated the Samsung Lions 4-1 on Monday to open the 2025 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason, with a gutsy outing by their starter and a series of timely hits forcing the second game of the wild card round. Left-hander Koo Chang-mo threw six innings of one-run ball and his batterymate Kim Hyung-jun backed him up with a solo home run before a sellout crowd of 23,680 at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul. Cleanup Matt Davidson contributed two RBIs.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the Lions, as No. 4 seed, can still reach the next round with at least a tie Tuesday, back in Daegu. The fifth-seeded Dinos must win again Tuesday to advance. The KBO introduced the wild card round in 2015 and the 2024 KT Wiz are the only No. 5 seed to make it out of this phase.
The Dinos won their last nine regular-season games to squeeze into the postseason and then claimed their first game of the postseason. The Dinos opened the scoring by stringing together three singles off starter Ariel Jurado in the top of the first inning, the third being an RBI knock by cleanup Matt Davidson.
The Dinos extended their lead to 2-0 in the top second when Kim Whee-jip's groundout scored Lee Woo-sung, who'd led off the inning with a double and advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt. The Dinos tacked on two more runs in the top fifth, with Kim Hyung-jun launching a solo home run off Jurado and Davidson collecting his second RBI of the game with a two-out double.
Kim's home run came at a cost, however, as he was lifted for his backup Kim Jeong-ho to begin the bottom fifth with a left wrist injury. Earlier in the top fifth, the Dinos had lost their designated hitter Park Kun-woo to a right hamstring injury. With runners at first and second with nobody out, Park hit a grounder to shortstop but ran hard down the line to beat the relay throw and prevent the double play. The 35-year-old had already been dealing with some hamstring pains for days.
Koo, in his fifth start of the year after getting discharged from military service, held the Lions to only three hits through four innings, before surrendering a solo home run to Lee Sung-gyu with two outs in the fifth. But it was the only damage the Lions inflicted on Koo and three relievers that followed. After Koo pitched around a one-out single in the sixth, lefty reliever Kim Young-kyu struck out two batters in a scoreless seventh, and Chun Sa-min and Kim Jin-ho also threw a scoreless inning each to lock down the win. The Lions bounced into three double plays in the loss.