The weekslong battle for the third seed in the South Korean baseball postseason will come down to the final regular-season meeting between the combatants.
The Kia Tigers blew a chance to clinch the No. 3 spot at home Sunday, when they lost to the Lotte Giants 4-1 at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field in the southwestern city of Gwangju.
A victory would have given the Tigers a direct ticket to the best-of-five first round of the Korea Baseball Organization postseason as the third seed and sent their rivals LG Twins to the wild card round as the fourth seed. The Doosan Bears, who clinched the No. 5 seed Wednesday, will be the other team in the wild card series.
With Sunday's loss by the Tigers, the winner of Monday's showdown between the Tigers and the Twins in Gwangju will grab the third seed. That game will begin at 6:30 p.m.
It will be the final game of the regular season for both clubs. The Tigers are currently in third place with a win-loss-tie record of 78-63-2, and the Twins are sitting in fourth place at 78-64-1.
The Tigers have a slight edge in their season series against the Twins so far at 8-7-0.
Most recently, the Tigers swept the Twins in their three-game series from Oct. 3 to 5, which allowed them to climb to third place.
In Sunday's game, though, Tigers starter Adam Oller served up a grand slam to Han Dong-hee in the top of the sixth inning that broke a scoreless deadlock, while the Tigers lineup managed just a run on six hits against four Giants pitchers.
With the KBO's postseason system favoring teams with better regular-season records, the difference between finishing third and fourth is significant.
The third seed will have four days off between the end of their regular season Monday and the start of their first round of the postseason Saturday. This layoff will allow that club to set its starting rotation so that its ace will be ready to pitch in Game 1.
The fourth seed, though, will only have one day of break before the wild card round begins Wednesday, and it will have to burn its best starter for that game.
In the wild card stage, the No. 4 seed only needs a win or a tie in two attempts to advance. If it loses the first game Wednesday, it will have to play again Thursday.
And if the fourth-ranked team ends up needing two wild card games to fend off the fifth-seed opponent, then it will only have one day off before starting the next postseason round Saturday. That team will not have its two best starting pitchers available until Game 3 of that series at the earliest. (Yonhap)
