Seoul: The Lotte Giants ended their two-game losing streak by defeating the Kiwoom Heroes 4-1 on Wednesday, with their starter Park Se-woong back on top of his game. In his best start in over two months, Park held the Heroes to a run on six hits in seven innings and struck out six batters before 15,325 fans at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. For the first time in four months, Park did not issue a walk.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the Giants put up a three-spot in the fifth before adding another in the seventh, as they improved to 49-42-3 (wins-losses-ties) and stayed in third place in the 10-team Korea Baseball Organization (KBO). The Heroes remained in last place at 28-63-3.

The game started out as an unlikely pitching duel between two starters who hadn't been close to being anyone's definition of an ace lately. Park carried an 11.91 ERA over his five previous starts, after allowing 30 earned runs on 43 hits, including eight home runs, in just 22 2/3 innings. His Heroes counterpart, Ha Yeong-min, had been a little better, with a 4.25 ERA since the start of June, but his last win had come on June 18.

The two right-handers traded zeroes for four innings, before Ha blinked first in the top of the fifth. With two outs that inning, Go Seung-min marked his return from a three-week injury absence with an RBI single to open the scoring. After Ha walked Yoon Dong-hee, Victor Reyes knocked a double down the left field line to cash in two more runs for a 3-0 Giants lead.

And that was more than enough run support for Park, who pitched a clean fifth and worked around a couple of singles in the sixth to keep the Heroes off the board. Reyes picked up his third RBI of the night with a two-out single off reliever Kim Seon-gi in the seventh.

The Heroes finally solved Park in the bottom seventh, with Oh Sun-jin delivering a two-out double to cut the deficit to 4-1. They couldn't get any more runs off Park, and the Giants' bullpen took care of the rest. The Heroes put men at the corners with no out in the bottom ninth against closer Kim Won-jung, thanks to a couple of singles and a throwing error by second baseman Son Ho-young. But then Kim struck out the next three batters for his 25th save, one off the KBO lead.

Park improved to 10-6 and lowered his ERA from 5.38 to 5.10. During this outing, Park also reached 100 innings and 100 strikeouts for the sixth straight season.