The last hope was lost with two games left until the end of the regular season. KIA failed to advance to the postseason.스포츠토토
On the 14th, Doosan recorded its 74th win (2 draws, 65 losses) of the season with a win against LG, beating 6th place KIA by 3.5 games. KIA, which is 3.5 games behind Doosan, which has the most 3 games remaining, will not be able to turn it around even if it wins the remaining 2 games, confirming its failure to advance to the postseason.
Until a month ago, KIA was in second place. KIA, who reentered the semifinals with 9 consecutive wins from the KT game on August 24 to the Doosan game on September 6, swept all 3 consecutive games against LG, including a double header on September 9 and 10, and reached the 60-win mark, rising to 4th place. . At the time, they were behind second place KT by only 2 games, signaling a major advance.
KIA ranks second in team batting average (0.275) this season. Since July, it has been in first place (0.291). Among them, KIA, which had the steepest rise after KT (34 wins, 1 draw, and 16 losses) with 31 wins, 1 draw, and 15 losses in 47 games until September 10, particularly saw its team batting average explode to 0.304 during this period. It was so exciting that they scored 78 points during the 9-game winning streak alone.
However, he was unable to overcome the aftereffects of his winning streak, and in the meantime, three crucial injuries ultimately held him back. Immediately after trailing 2nd place KT by 2 games, KIA lost 7 games in a row. As top hitter Park Chan-ho was unable to play due to a finger ligament injury, the batting line was completely unbalanced. In the process, Na Seong-beom was diagnosed with up to 12 weeks for a hamstring rupture while base running in the game against LG in Gwangju on September 19, and Hyung-woo Choi was diagnosed with 16 weeks for a comminuted clavicle fracture when he fell after colliding with an opposing defender in the game against KT on September 24. . When Choi Hyung-woo was injured, Park Chan-ho, who recovered quickly, returned quickly, but was diagnosed with a comminuted fracture of the ulna after being hit by a pitch in a game against KT on October 4 and was diagnosed with a comminuted fracture of the ulna.
Even after the opening, KIA played with a gap of nearly three months in the first half due to injuries to Na Seong-beom and Kim Do-young. At the end of the season, when the game was at stake the most, there was an unprecedented amount of bad news, with the two main hitters and the top hitter getting injured one after another in just 15 days. As we have seen during the winning streak how frighteningly explosive the team can be when playing with a full lineup, the serial injuries to key hitters that occurred just as they were about to advance further are the direct cause of KIA’s elimination in the semifinals, which no one can deny.
It remains an even bigger regret that he was unable to fill the void in the batting lineup with a mound. Recently, KIA held its own well by playing with a lineup that was almost like backup members, but foreign pitchers, who were at the center of power instability throughout the season, were unable to settle down until the end.
Replacing both foreign pitchers at the end of the first half was a bid to settle in the top 5 and go further, but it failed. Both Thomas Panoni and Mario Sanchez failed to show the stability they had hoped for.
KIA recorded 11 wins and 17 losses in the 28 games played since September 10, when it trailed KT by two games. The team’s ERA during this period is 9th (4.67). Among them, only 4 wins came as a starter. The domestic starters were not lucky, and the foreign starters performed poorly. Yang Hyeon-jong took responsibility for 38.1 innings in 6 games and pitched well with an ERA of 2.58, but only managed to get one win, and Lee Ui-ri got one win amidst the ‘National Team Controversy’. Panoni, who has two wins in six games, has an ERA of 7.14 during this period. Sanchez, who returned after missing more than a month due to injury, suffered only two losses with an ERA of 5.94 in three games during this period.
Because the foreign duo was not stable throughout the season, there was no pitcher to center the mound during a period when even Yang Hyun-jong was shaken. The burden relatively shifted to the bullpen, and in the end, he was unable to find the strength to do so at the end of the season when he needed to run with all his might.
KIA, which had many cancellations due to rain, played a tight schedule in the last month with many key players missing due to injuries. In the game against Doosan on the 13th, which should have been a win, they had to use Kim Geon-guk as a replacement starter, and on that day, only Kim Do-young, Kim Sun-bin, and Socrates had 1 hit each in the batting lineup, and lost 1-3. This is the first loss that clearly shows the last month of KIA’s life, where they lost all their strength after holding on and holding on.