SEOUL-- On Nov. 4, 2020, the LG Twins and the Doosan Bears, two clubs sharing a Seoul home in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), started their first round, best-of-three postseason series.
The co-tenants of Jamsil Baseball Stadium will open their first round meeting exactly one year later on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. The first pitch is 6:30 p.m.
One notable difference from last year is that the Twins will have the home field advantage as the No. 3 seed from the regular season. The Bears, seeded fourth, had to go through a two-game wild card series against the Kiwoom Heroes to reach this point.
And the Twins are hoping the result will be different this year, too.
The Bears beat them in two straight games last year, en route to reaching their sixth consecutive Korean Series. The Twins are chasing their first title since 1994 and their first Korean Series appearance since 2002.
The Bears won the season series 7-6-3 (wins-losses-ties) and have won three out of five postseason series meetings against the Twins so far.
Both clubs have significant injuries. The Bears will be without both of their foreign starters, Ariel Miranda and Walker Lockett.
Losing Miranda, the regular season ERA champion and strikeout king, will particularly sting. Miranda set a new single season record with 225 strikeouts on Oct. 24, and never made another start again because of a fatigued shoulder.
Doosan manager Kim Tae-hyoung said Tuesday night that Miranda hadn't even picked up the ball since being sidelined last week and he was unlikely to pitch in this series.
The Twins lost their starting shortstop Oh Ji-hwan for the year with a broken collarbone. He suffered that injury last Friday, the penultimate day of the season, while attempting a diving catch.
Oh has been rated as one of the KBO's top defensive players at any position in recent years and is as irreplaceable as they come for the Twins.
The Twins will start left-hander Andrew Suarez, who went 10-2 with a 2.18 ERA in 23 starts in his first KBO season. He was 1-1 with a 3.38 ERA in three starts versus the Bears, with 15 strikeouts in 16 innings.
Suarez missed about a month in the second half of the season with an upper back injury.
The Bears will counter with right-hander Choi Won-joon, who went 12-4 with a 3.30 ERA in 29 starts in his first season as a full-time starter.
Choi made one regular season start against the Twins on April 17 and held them to a run on three hits in six innings for the win.
One of the three hits was a solo home run by Kim Hyun-soo, an ex-Doosan star who batted .345/.443/.527 with three long balls and 10 RBIs against his former team this year.
For the Bears, an erstwhile Twin Yang Suk-hwan will be out to hurt his former club.
He was benched during last year's series against the Bears, leading to what Yang recently admitted to bouts of self-doubt. He was traded to the Bears in March this year and set career highs with 28 home runs and 96 RBIs. He had a home run and eight RBIs against the Twins in 16 regular season meetings.
Yang had his breakthrough postseason game Tuesday night with a three-hit, four-RBI performance.
LG manager Ryu Ji-hyun said the Bears are a well-balanced team.
"They have some speedy runners and they will be aggressive on base paths," Ryu said. "We'll have to be prepared for that. In the postseason, you have to minimize mistakes and pay attention to small details. I am confident our players will have a strong series."
Asked about his plans on facing the Twins, Doosan manager Kim Tae-hyoung said Tuesday there wasn't one.
"We have to see how different situations develop within each game and react accordingly," Kim said. "We won't be going in with anything set in stone."
Source: Yonhap News Agency