The Kia Tigers moved to the cusp of their 12th South Korean baseball title with a 9-2 win over the Samsung Lions on the road in Game 4 of the Korean Series on Saturday.
No. 9 hitter Kim Tae-gun smacked a grand slam in a six-run third inning at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul, while starter James Naile struck out seven in 5 2/3 innings, as the Tigers grabbed a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) championship round.
The Tigers now have a chance to capture their first title since 2017 at home in Game 5 on Monday at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field in Gwangju, 270 kilometers south of Seoul.
The Tigers are a perfect 11-for-11 in the Korean Series, and no team has won more titles in KBO history. They have clinched the title at home just once in their history — in the 1987 Korean Series against the Lions. With the next three games in Gwangju, the Tigers are assured of a championship celebration in Gwangju with one more victory.
This is the 42nd edition
of the Korean Series, and there have been 17 occasions where a team fell behind 3-1. Only one team, the 2013 Lions, rallied from that deficit to win the title.
After getting shut down for five innings by Lions starter Won Tae-in in Monday’s Game 1, the Tigers got a run off the right-hander in the first inning Saturday while making him work for 32 pitches.
Their first two batters, Park Chan-ho and Kim Sun-bin, hit an infield single and a double, and cleanup Na Sung-bum scored Park on a groundout to second.
The Tigers blew the game wide open with a six-spot in the top third, knocking Won out of the game in the process.
Won gave up a single, a walk and another single to load the bases for Socrates Brito, who singled home two runs to put the Tigers up 3-0.
After a sacrifice bunt, Won walked Lee Chang-jin to load the bases once again.
Then with Byeon Woo-hyeok at the plate, Won called for a team trainer, for what the Lions later said was a shoulder problem, and walked off the field under his own power.
Reli
ever Song Eun-beom got Byeon to pop out to catcher but couldn’t get past Kim Tae-gun, who turned this into a 7-0 game with one swing of the bat.
He hammered an inside slider and put it just inside the left field foul pole for his first career postseason home run. It was the fifth grand slam in Korean Series history. The current Tigers manager, Lee Bum-ho, was the last one to hit one — in Game 5 of the 2017 Korean Series for the Tigers.
Unlike his counterpart, Won, who threw 78 pitches in only 2 1/3 innings, Naile was far more efficient in working his way through the Lions’ lineup.
He held them to just two singles through three innings. Naile then limited the damage to just one run in the bottom fourth when things could have gotten dicier.
With two outs and runners at first and second, Naile gave up an RBI single to Kim Young-woong. The hit put runners at the corners for Lee Sung-gyu, who had homered on Friday. Following a mound visit, Naile got Lee to fan on a 1-2 sweeper to end the inning.
The Lions sh
owed a bit more life with Lee Jae-hyeon’s solo home run off Naile to begin the bottom fifth, but then the Tigers pulled away even further in the top sixth, thanks to Brito’s two-run homer off reliever Choi Chae-heung.
After Naile covered 5 2/3 innings, the bullpen took care of the rest with 3 1/3 innings of one-hit ball.
Source: Yonhap News Agency