The best lineup has seven left-handed hitters. This may be the strongest lineup in baseball, but it has a weakness: left-handed hitters are weak against left-handed pitchers.
The top-ranked LG Twins lead the league in both ERA (3.66) and team batting average (0.282), meaning they have the best pitching staff and best batting lineup.
The LG lineup is characterized by a large number of left-handed hitters. There are seven left-handed hitters in the best lineup: Hong Chang-ki at #1, Shin Min-jae at #2, Kim Hyun-soo at #3, Moon Bo-kyung at #5, Oh Ji-hwan at #6, Moon Sung-joo at #8, and Park Hae-min at #9. The only two right-handed batters are Austin Dean at No. 4 and Park Dong-won at No. 7.
LG manager Yeom Kyung-yeop thought a lot about the batting order before the season. He envisioned a lineup with a lot of right-handed hitters to give the main players a break when facing left-handed pitchers. Kim Min-sung, Lee Jae-won, Son Ho-young, and others were able to take the place of Moon Bo-kyung and Oh Ji-hwan Moon Sung-joo.
While there were a few right-handed lineups during the season, Yeom stuck with his best lineup against left-handed pitchers as the season progressed. “At the end of the day, in the postseason, you have to go with your best lineup regardless of the type of opponent you’re facing, so there’s no point in platooning,” he said.
Despite having a lot of left-handed hitters, LG’s offense has been able to hit left-handed pitchers well. LG’s batting average against left-handed pitchers was 2.084, which was slightly better than their average against right-handed pitchers (0.280).
Hong Chang-ki (0.336), Park Hae-min (0.328), Moon Bo-kyung (0.304), Kim Hyun-soo (0.289), and Oh Ji-hwan (0.277) also hit well against left-handed pitching. On the other hand, Moon Sung-joo was 2-for-4 and Shin Min-jae was 2-for-6.
However, there was a barrier that even the best LG hitters couldn’t overcome. The most notable pitchers are KT Wiz’s Wes Benjamin and Hanwha Eagles’ Ricardo Sanchez. Benjamin has won all four of his LG games this season, and his ERA is a whopping 0.71. Even when he was struggling, he was able to bounce back in the LG Electronics League. In 25⅓ innings pitched, he gave up 14 hits, walked just two, and struck out a whopping 26.
Sanchez was also strong against LG. In two games, Sanchez pitched 14 innings without allowing a run in a 1-1 tie. On June 10, Sanchez pitched eight innings of two-hit ball in Daejeon to earn the win, and on June 2, he pitched six innings of three-hit ball in Jamsil. Although he allowed the tying run to score in the bottom of the eighth inning, he was unable to get the win, but he proved to be a solid LG killer. Only three LG batters have hit against Sanchez: Oh Ji-hwan (2), Hong Chang-ki (2), and Shin Min-jae (1).
Samsung Lions’ Baek Jung-hyun has also been very good against LG, going 3-0 with a 0.92 ERA in three games, SSG Landers’ Kirk McCarty threw six shutout innings in one start, and Loenis Elias has a 2-0 record with a 2.77 ERA in two games.
The vast majority of the pitchers who have dominated in the LG have been left-handed. The standouts among right-handed pitchers were Choi Won-tae, who went 3-0 with a 0.95 ERA and is now an LG player, and NC’s Eric Peddy, who went 2-0 with a 2.12 ERA.먹튀검증
LG could face the likes of Benjamin, McCarty, Elias, and Pedi in the postseason. In the end, they’ll have to win against them to have any hope of winning.
LG has one more meeting with Benjamin right now. LG will play a three-game midweek series against KT in Suwon starting on the 5th, and KT’s projected lineup is William Cuevas-Benjamin-Young-pyo, with 1-3 starters in total. In particular, Benjamin is likely to play on the 6th. Since they are likely to meet in the Korean Series, they will need to attack aggressively to lower their opponent’s confidence.
When asked about the three-game series against KT, LG manager Yeom Kyung-yup said, “We need to catch Benjamin first. We have 5 wins and 5 losses against KT, but we lost 4 games to Benjamin alone,” he said.