At the Plate…
Team Korea got to Japanese starter, Utsumi Tetsuya, in the first inning and it was all downhill from there. KBO batting champ Kim Hyeon-su drilled a ground rule double to push across Korea’s first run. The team wouldn’t score again until Lee Beom-ho clobbered a solo homer in the 7th inning. Team Korea only managed 6 hits in total and Lee Beom-ho was the only Korean hitter to have a multi-hit game.
On the mound…
Jang Won-sam was competent in a starting role. In his 3 innings of work he allowed 2 runs(1 earned) on 5 hits with 2 K’s. The Korean bullpen was awful. Oh Seung-hwan, Kim Kwang-hyeon and Lim Chang-yong surrendered 4 runs during the last 4 innings. Most of the damage was done by Oh. The KBO saves leader is either hiding an injury or he didn’t pick up a baseball until this WBC thing started. Guess which one of those is true? (Hint – it’s not the 2nd option).
In the field…
The Korean team looked fairly lethargic in the field. To be fair, the wanted to rest some of their middle infielders, so Choi Jeong had to play out of position and cover shortstop. He committed a costly throwing error in the 2nd inning that allowed Japan to get a runner into scoring position. Lee Taek-geun also misplayed two balls in center field and was charged with errors on both.
This was just a miserable game for the Korean side on all fronts. They’ve shown they’ve been able to regroup after bad losses. Here’s hoping they can pull it together against a TOUGH Venezuelan team on Saturday at 8 PM ET. Ryu Hyeon-jin is the likely starter for the Korean team.
Topics: 2009 WBC, Korean Baseball
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