With their best starter dealing on the mound, the Kiwoom Heroes probably knew they didn’t need much offense to beat the KT Wiz on Tuesday night.
And little offense is exactly what the Heroes ended up producing, as they squeezed past the Wiz 1-0 at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul.
Right-hander An Woo-jin took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning and struck out seven, lowering his ERA to 0.84. He leads the Korea Baseball Organization in strikeouts with 46 in 32 innings.
The Wiz have lost four straight games.
The teams were scoreless through four and a half innings, with just one hit between them and the Heroes unable to score after loading the bases with nobody out in the fourth.
The Heroes finally snapped the string of zeroes in the bottom fifth.
Kim Whee-jip led off the inning with a single off starter Um Sang-baek but was erased at second base on Lee Ji-young’s botched sacrifice bunt attempt.
Lee atoned for that mistake by stealing second base and then came around to score on Lee Yong-kyu’s single to right field.
Never a fast runner, Lee Ji-young took full advantage when second baseman Oh Yoon-suk deflected the ball with his glove in a diving catch attempt and only ended up slowing it down. If Oh had let the ball past him, Lee likely wouldn’t have had the green light to come home from second base.
An made sure that lone run would be enough on this day, though he got into some trouble in the seventh.
Alford broke up An’s no-hit bid by leading off the top seventh with a single. He promptly stole second base, the first time the Wiz had a man at second base in the game. Then on Park Byung-ho’s chopper back to An, Alford slid safely into third to beat the pitcher’s throw.
The Wiz now threatened to get on the board, with men at the corners with nobody out. However, they went down meekly and only let An off the hook.
Jang Sung-woo popped out to catcher, and then Moon Sang-chul, a backup who got the start because of a strong track record against An, inexplicably tried to bunt Alford home at 0-1 count.
The ball rolled right back to An, who easily threw out Alford.
Then pinch hitter Kim Jun-tae went down swinging on An’s 157 kph fastball, the righty’s seventh and final strikeout of the game.
Relievers Kim Dong-hyeok and Kim Jae-woong each tossed a scoreless inning to preserve the one-run victory.
Source: Yonhap News Agency