Hanwha are falling apart and Kiwoom have their number. Hanwha have lost five in a row and nine of their last ten, and Kiwoom just beat them 7-2 and 9-3 in this same ballpark. I am siding with the team that has been winning this matchup, and I like that the price treats Hanwha as the clear favourite anyway.
Kiwoom sit last and Hanwha ninth, and Hanwha's ninth place was made official in the last meeting. So nobody is chasing anything here, and the question is simply who is playing better right now. On recent games that is Kiwoom: in their last ten they have scored 5.6 runs a game, while Hanwha have let in 6.4.
The season series is lopsided. Kiwoom have won eight straight against Hanwha and stand at 9 wins, 4 losses and a draw for the year. Over the 14 meetings I could see, Kiwoom won nine.
Hanwha's pitching has been the problem. In the latest game their starter Park Jun-young was out after 1 1/3 innings with four runs against him, and Zimmerman had to cover 4 2/3 innings after that. Kiwoom's Ahn Woo-jin struck out ten over five innings in the same game. Hanwha have also won by two or more runs in only 3 of their last 20 games, which says a lot about how little margin they have been producing.
The starters for this game were not announced when I looked, and neither were the line-ups.
