| Doosan Bears players celebrate winning this year's Korean Series title by crowding starting pitcher Yu Hui-kwan, after defeating the NC Dinos 8-1 in the fourth game at Masan Stadium in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, Wednesday. With the victory, the Doosan Bears completed a clean sweep of the best-of-seven match-up. / Yonhap |
By Kim Tae-gyu
The Doosan Bears beat the NC Dinos 8-1 in Game 4 of the Korean Series to clinch the title for the second straight year, Wednesday, sweeping the best-of-seven championship of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) league.
The Seoul-based club's fifth overall series victory came in Masan, the home turf of the Dinos whose hitters struggled throughout the four matches ― they managed to score just two runs in the series.
The credit should belong to the four starters for the Bears, all of whom recorded more than 15 wins respectively in the regular season, for the first time in the KBO league's 35 year history. They joined forces to chalk up 68 wins during the 144-game pennant race where Doosan topped the podium.
The “fantastic four” of Dustin Nippert, Jang Won-jun, Michael Bowden and Yu Hui-kwan started the four series outings in order so as to combine to rack up four wins by throwing 29 1/3 innings, allowing merely a run.
The performance of the Doosan relievers, led by southpaw closer Lee Hyun-seung, was by no means inferior to that of the starters because they hurled 8 2/3 innings to give up one run.
And Doosan hitters manufactured a total of 20 runs to complete the sweep, the first in six years after SK Wyverns' clean defeat of the Samsung Lions in 2010 and the seventh in the KBO history.
In the final game, the go-ahead run came on a solo homer from catcher Yang Eui-ji in the second inning. The slugger helped the Bears double the lead in the sixth inning with an RBI single, which was followed by a two-run double by Hur Kyoung-min.
Oh Jae-won's three-run home run in the ninth inning was the fireworks to celebrate the team's back-to-back triumphs.
The NC Dinos, which made it to the Korean Series for the first time after it was founded in 2011, had good opportunities in the first and sixth innings but failed to make things happen.
With runners on the corner and no outs, in particular, the formidable cleanup trio of the NC Dinos ― Na Sung-bum, Eric Thames and Park Sok-min ― faced the second Doosan pitcher Lee Hyun-seung in the sixth inning but they could not produce a run.
The three are the league's representative clutch hitters but they remained unproductive throughout the series. Thames cleared the wall in the ninth but it was too late.
From the perspective of the Dinos, however, this season is a success as it finished second in the pennant race.
The club also defeated the LG Twins 3-1 in the best-of-five playoff series so as to take on the Doosan Bears in the championship battle only to find that the latter was way too strong and experienced for the first-comer in such a big showdown.
The Doosan Bears has been next to none throughout this year both in offense and defense ― it hit the most homers; its hitting average was the highest; and the number of team errors was the lowest.
Doosan catcher Yang was selected as the most valuable player of the Korean Series.