With his team’s season on the brink, LG Twins manager Youm Kyoung-youb said Thursday he will use “every option available” in a do-or-die game against the Samsung Lions at home.

The Twins dropped the first two games of the teams’ Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason series and sit a loss away from getting swept in the best-of-five affair. The winner of this series will advance to the Korean Series, and the Twins are trying to win their second straight title.

Against this backdrop, Youm said right-hander Elieser Hernandez, his best weapon out of the bullpen, will be available for multiple innings after starter Im Chan-kyu.

Hernandez threw 7 1/3 shutout innings and struck out 10 while appearing in all five games of the previous series against the KT Wiz. However, with the Twins losing 10-5 and then 10-4 against the Lions in the past two games, the Twins never got into a situation where Hernandez could come on and protect late-inning leads.

The Twins can no longer afford to wait for such a situation
to materialize.

“Hernandez will be our second pitcher. Since he has rested for five days, he can pitch like a starting pitcher,” Youm said in his pregame presser at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul. “One more loss means the end of our season. We will use every option available to us and take it one game at a time.”

Lions manager Park Jin-man will have multiple arms available from his bullpen. With the Lions slugging eight homers in the first two games to build early leads, this hasn’t been a taxing series for their relievers.

“We have a few relievers who haven’t pitched, and we will be able to lean on them, depending on game situations,” Park said. “Obviously, the best-case scenario for us is to finish this series as early as possible. It would give us extra rest before the Korean Series.”

After two games that featured 11 homers at Daegu Samsung Lions Park, the series has shifted to Jamsil, the least hitter-friendly stadium in the KBO, where home runs may give way to situational hitting.

“It all depends
on whether we take an early lead or we have to play catchup,” Park said. “But since we’ll be playing at a bigger stadium, we have come prepared for different situations. The Twins made life difficult for us during the regular season with their strategies, but we will be ready.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency