The KBO regular season ends with two games that carry completely different kinds of pressure. KIA and LG meet in Gwangju for the third seed, and the awkward part is that the loser isn't knocked out, just sent into a wild card series after a single day off. That puts the weight on the late innings more than the early ones: a manager who empties his bullpen chasing this game and still loses walks into the wild card with tired arms. Over in Daegu, Samsung have nothing left to win, while KT have a whole list of things to chase.
The gap between third and fourth is bigger than it sounds. As Korea JoongAng Daily lays out, the third seed gets four days off and can line up its ace for the opener of the first round. The fourth seed has to use its best starter in the wild card game, only needs a win or a tie from two tries, but if it needs both games it won't have its top two starters back until the third game of the next round at the earliest. Star News adds that Doosan, the fifth seed, effectively have Kwak Bin lined up for the first wild card game.
Both clubs arrive on 78 wins (KIA 78-63-2, LG 78-64-1), but they got there differently. On our table KIA have scored 765 and allowed 662; LG have scored 721 and allowed 722. A team sitting on 78 wins with a run differential of minus one has won a lot of tight games over the season, and yet tight games are exactly what KIA have taken off them lately: the sweep in Seoul went 5-4, 6-5 and 6-4. LG also came out of a six-game losing run only recently, winning three of their last four. So I wouldn't treat LG's knack for close games as something they can lean on here. Recently that's where their games have slipped away.
The starters bring their own side plots. Im Chan-gyu can take his 16th win and an outright wins title, per Financial News, while Yang Hyeon-jong has faced LG three times this season with a 4.61 ERA. And the Gwangju forecast calls for rain on and off, which could stretch this into a game neither bench planned for.
Samsung against KT is the opposite shape. Samsung have locked up second place and their captain Koo Ja-wook won't be used in the field because of a hamstring problem (Daegu Shinmun). KT, already champions, are going for a first 90-win season and a first ten-game winning streak in club history. The thread tying the two games together is individual: KT's Sam Hilliard and KIA's Kim Do-young are level on 44 home runs, so the home run title gets decided in two ballparks at once, and KT leadoff man Choi Won-jun sits on 205 hits against Lotte's Victor Reyes on 207.
So here's what I'm curious about: when the loser plays again after one day off, does a manager run this like a Game 7, or does he quietly hold one or two relievers back? Which bench do you think blinks first?
