DAEGU– The second round of the ongoing South Korean baseball postseason presents an ultimate managerial mismatch.
On one end is Kim Tae-hyoung of the Doosan Bears, who has been in the postseason every year since taking the helm in 2015 and has won three Korean Series titles in that span. His counterpart for the Samsung Lions is Huh Sam-young, a second-year manager in his first career postseason in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO).
Baseball managers don’t take the field to play games themselves, but they can still affect outcomes by putting players in situations to succeed, be it with bullpen management or lineup changes.
And despite a depleted pitching staff with one viable starter left standing, Kim has been pushing all the right buttons so far. The Bears knocked off the Kiwoom Heroes for the wild card and then took down the LG Twins in the previous round to get to this point.
Kim’s considerable postseason success isn’t lost on Huh.
“No team has more postseason experience than Doosan right now, and they have so much depth that you can’t beat them just by containing one or two players,” Huh said Tuesday at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, in a press conference prior to Game 1. “But rather than figuring out our opponents, we first tried to focus on our own strengths. We will try to control what we can control, and not worry too much about who we’re playing.”
David Buchanan will start the opening game for the Lions. He tied for the league lead with 16 wins in the regular season but he had an 8.00 ERA against the Bears.
However, Huh said he never thought twice about his choice of Game 1 starter.
“Buchanan is the ace of our team. Though he didn’t have great regular season numbers against the Bears, things will be different in the postseason,” Huh said. “It’s only a logical thing to do to start the ace in the first game.”
This is the first postseason meeting between these two clubs since the 2015 Korean Series. The Bears beat the Lions in five games to launch their current run of success, while the Lions went on to miss the postseason the next five years before returning this year.
In his pregame presser following Huh’s, Kim tried to downplay the “renewing rivalry” angle.
“I feel the same about every team we play. I worry about all of them,” Kim said. “(The Lions) have power and speed, and they have great balance up and down the lineup. But we’ve hit well against Samsung. Hopefully, we’ll score a few runs and keep the other guys off the board.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency