With their Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason series having been affected by rain this week, managers for the two contestants both claimed Tuesday the extra rest will benefit their club.
Game 2 of the best-of-five series between the Samsung Lions and the LG Twins was rained out Monday at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul, and was rescheduled for Tuesday.
The Lions had won the first game 10-4 on Sunday, playing for the first time since the end of their regular season on Sept. 28. The Twins, on the other hand, had just one day of break before that game, after battling the KT Wiz in a hard-fought, five-game series the previous week.
It may be tempting to assume the extra rest would benefit the Twins more than the Lions, who would have preferred to keep on playing, but Lions skipper Park Jin-man said his team didn’t mind the weather-induced delay. For one, his Game 1 starter, Denyi Reyes, will get an extra day of break before his scheduled Game 4 start, now set for Friday instead of Thursday.
“We believe there are a lot of positive elements to take away from this,” Park said in his pregame presser Tuesday. “The Twins have their fatigue issues, but Game 1 was also tough for us physically and mentally, because it was our first one in a long time. We think it’s good for us that we got a day off after the opening game.”
Lions captain Koo Ja-wook also stands to benefit from the postponement. Koo played through nausea in Game 스포츠토토사이트 1 and still hit a three-run home run in the opening game. He vomited immediately after the win and was taken to a local hospital for an IV shot.
“He is even better today than yesterday,” Park said of the outfielder. “He would have been able to play at near full strength yesterday.”
Twins manager Youm Kyoung-youb maintained Tuesday that the extra break afforded by rain will help his team more, especially on the pitching end.
“The best thing about this schedule change is that we can have good pitchers available for three games,” Youm said in his pregame media session. “Otherwise, we would have been forced to use less-than-ideal options in some games.”
Youm rode starter-turned-reliever Elieser Hernandez for all five games of the previous round, but he did not pitch Sunday. If Hernandez takes the ball Tuesday, he will do so on three days’ rest.
“He has been off for three days, and we have another day off tomorrow, so he could potentially go for two innings today,” said Youm, who previously said he would only lean on Hernandez for one inning per outing in this series. “From Game 3 and on, we will see how games play out.”