After being away from fall baseball, the team had only one goal: to avoid last place. The players’ determination was strong. After cruising through the month of August, the Samsung Lions took a breather.
Samsung went 12-9 (.571) in 21 August games through the 27th against the Daegu Kiwoom Heroes, 토스카지노representing the fifth-highest monthly winning percentage among the 10 clubs. In the meantime, the team has climbed to eighth place in the standings, and the gap to the seventh-place Lotte Giants has shrunk to 2.5 games.
After ending the first half of the year in a downbeat mood, Samsung’s first three-game series of the second half was a losing series against the Daegu KT Wiz on July 21-23, but the team rebounded with a 2-1 win against the Daegu SSG Landers on July 25-27, followed by a 2-1 win against the Gochuk Kiwoom on July 28-30.
The trend continued in August. In particular, Samsung had two three-game series against LG this month, both of which they won with a 2-1 record. Coincidentally, LG, which had been in the lead until July, slowly closed the gap on second-place KT after failing to avoid Samsung’s ‘chili pepper’. It’s not a dramatic turnaround, but it’s clear that their performance has changed compared to the first half of the year.
If there’s one thing that stands out, it’s the fact that there were almost no losing streaks in the month of August. Samsung’s longest losing streak during this period was two games in a row against the Incheon SSG on December 12-13, and they never lost more than three games in a row. The veteran players have been able to steady the ship and have maintained the smoothest pace since the start of the regular season.
The biggest driving force has been the power of the batting lineup, which ranks second in team batting average (0.296) in August. Koo Ja-rook and Kim Sung-yoon are maintaining a high batting average of over 4%, while Lee Jae-hyun (0.365) and Ryu Ji-hyuk (0.362) are also contributing. Then there’s Oh Jae-il, who had been quiet, but came up big in the home series against Kiwoom on May 25-27. With a grand slam on the 26th and a three-hit game the next day, the veteran played his part in the team’s victory.
The offense didn’t perform as well as expected after Taylor Widener replaced the injured Albert Suarez, but David Buchanan and Jung-hyun Paik pitched well, and Won Tae-in did his part. Closer Oh Seung-hwan shut down the back door, collecting 10 saves in August alone.
Samsung will need to finish this week’s six-game series with flying colors if they want to continue to perform well in September and beyond. That’s because they have some tough opponents. First, Samsung will play a three-game series against KT, the top-ranked team in August, on the road in Suwon from Sept. 29-31, followed by a three-game series at home against the NC Dinos, the second-ranked team in August.
The silver lining for Samsung is that it hasn’t been outclassed by KT and NC. The head-to-head record against KT is tied at 6-6 in 12 games, while Samsung has a slight edge with a 6-4 record against NC. It will be interesting to see if Samsung can put the brakes on the rise of these two teams.