Seoul: Save for one player's heroics, South Korean bats were kept in check in a 5-4 loss to Chinese Taipei in extra innings at the World Baseball Classic (WBC) on Sunday. Leadoff man Kim Do-yeong accounted for half of South Korea's two hits in the loss, which pushed South Korea to the brink of elimination from knockout contention for the fourth consecutive WBC.
According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea managed just one hit off starter Gu Lin Ruei-Yang through four innings and didn't even make him work that hard, either. The right-hander needed only 46 pitches to get his 12 outs, while his counterpart, Ryu Hyun-jin, threw 50 pitches over three innings. South Korea finally put a man in scoring position against Gu Lin in the top fifth, when Ahn Hyun-min worked a leadoff walk and Moon Bo-gyeong singled to put runners at the corners.
With Shay Whitcomb coming to the plate, Gu Lin was pulled for lefty Lin Wei-En, who induced a double play ball that brought in the tying run. Then with South Korea down 2-1 in the bottom sixth, Kim Do-yeong launched a two-run home run to flip the lead to 3-2 in his team's favor. It was just South Korea's third hit of the game.
The team's fourth and final hit also came off Kim's bat in the bottom eighth, a double to deep center that tied the score at 4-4. South Korea wasted chances to emerge victorious from this seesaw affair. But Kim Ju-won hit a flyout with a winning run standing at second with two outs in the bottom ninth. Then after Chinese Taipei broke the deadlock with a run in the top 10th, South Korea had a tying run at second with two outs in the bottom 10th, and Kim Do-yeong came to bat.
A hit would have knotted the score again and kept the line moving for big boppers behind Kim, but Kim ran out of magic by then as he flied out to right. The quiet offensive performance came on the heels of an emotional, 8-6 loss to Japan the previous night. South Korea had a quick turnaround to play the afternoon game Sunday, but then, Chinese Taipei was playing on its fourth consecutive day while South Korea had enjoyed an off day Friday.
South Korea opened the tournament with an 11-run explosion under Czechia on Thursday and then outhit Japan 9-7 two days later. But the bats that had shown signs of cooling off in late innings against Japan failed to recover in time against Chinese Taipei.
Source: Yonhap News Agency