SEOUL– Four days after homering off LG Twins starter Casey Kelly in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason, Kiwoom Heroes slugger Yasiel Puig was at it again Friday night.
Puig blasted a solo home run off Kelly in the bottom third in Game 4 of the teams’ postseason series, breaking a 1-1 tie. Puig later drove in an insurance run in the seventh, helping the Heroes to a 4-1 victory that sent them to the Korean Series, the KBO’s championship round.
It was Puig’s second home run of this best-of-five series, which the Heroes won 3-1. The Cuban slugger also had a home run in the Heroes’ five-game victory over the KT Wiz in the previous round.
By rising to the occasion Friday with a ticket to the Korean Series within grasp, Puig showed why the Heroes signed him last offseason despite his considerable baggage.
Puig is quite used to playing high-stakes games in October, with 58 major league postseason games under his belt, including 12 in the World Series.
But Puig arrived in the KBO with a reputation as a cantankerous teammate and a head case. Though Puig didn’t cause any trouble on his new team in the early going here, he didn’t exactly set the league on fire at the plate.
It wasn’t until after the All-Star break that Puig began to make some noise. In the second half, Puig ranked second in the KBO with an on-base plus slugging of .962 and 12 home runs.
And he has been able to build on that in the postseason. In four games against the Twins, Puig batted 6-for-13 with two home runs and five RBIs, both of them tops on his team.
Puig said he was sold on the Heroes’ vision of trying to win a championship and he wanted to help the club achieve that goal. And after losing in two World Series in 2017 and 2018 as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Puig also wants a championship ring for himself.
“While I was with the Dodgers, I went to six straight postseasons and two straight World Series, and came up short every time,” Puig said through an interpreter. “Now I am playing in a third country that is neither the United States nor Cuba. This is a fresh start for me, and I’d love to win a title here.”
Puig said he has been feeding off the energy of the crowd here throughout the postseason but added he found his teammates to be more reserved and passive than the ones he’d played with in the majors.
“I think it’s my job to inject more energy into the clubhouse,” Puig said. “I want to play a passionate brand of baseball with the guys.”
Puig’s timely hits backed a gutsy start by right-hander Tyler Eppler, who pitched on three days’ rest.
Eppler pitched just three innings in Game 1 on Monday and gave up four runs, though only one of them was earned, because his teammates made three errors behind him.
That Eppler only threw 47 pitches then apparently helped Friday. He looked none the worse for wear, consistently wiggling his way out of jams after giving up the first run on three straight singles in the top of the first.
All told, Eppler scattered seven hits across six frames. He struck out only two but didn’t walk anyone.
After a one-out single, Eppler got an inning-ending double play ball against Kim Hyun-soo, who had been the Twins’ best hitter in this series. Two singles in the fourth inning amounted to nothing for the Twins, and Eppler pitched around a two-out double in the fifth.
He punctuated his outing by retiring the side in the sixth and struck out the last batter he faced, Moon Bo-gyeong, with a 1-2 changeup.
The usually stoic pitcher let out a scream, and the rest of the Heroes had plenty to get excited about on this night.
While Puig and Eppler took care of business at the plate and on the mound Friday, outfielder Lee Jung-hoo made the biggest impact over the course of the series. He was voted the MVP of this round after batting .500 (8-for-16) with four doubles, a home run and two RBIs. He slugged at a .938 clip, which may look like a typo if it had been attached to any other name but Lee’s.
“I think LG pitchers were coming right at me from the first game, and I stayed aggressive at the plate,” Lee said. “I got to swing the bat quite a bit, because they kept throwing me strikes. I was able to get my timing down that way.”
The Heroes got swept in the 2019 Korean Series by the Doosan Bears, when Lee was in his third season. Lee said the 2019 team might have been more talented — “We expected to go to the Korean Series that year,” Lee said — but he is having more fun this year.
“It means so much to have come this far in a year when no one expected us to get there,” Lee said. “We have an incredible bunch of guys here. It’s almost like we’re playing in a national high school tournament. We’re having a lot of fun, and we’ll be ready to leave everything on the field.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency