Friday, March 20, 2009

Japan 6, Korea 2



Well, meh. This was essentially a meaningless game. It was only played for seeding purposes. Japan gets to play the USA on Sunday and Korea has to face Venezuela on Saturday.

KBO batting champ, Kim Hyeon-su, got the party started right in the first inning with an RBI ground rule double to give Korea a 1-0 advantage. In the top of the 2nd, Japan's Seiichi Uchikawa hit a solo homer to tie the game. Shuichi Murata singled and advanced to second on center fielder Lee Taek-geun's fielding error. He advanced to third on Choi Jeong's throwing error. To be fair, Choi was playing out of position. I can't remember him ever playing shortstop before. Murata scored on an RBI single from Yasayuki Kataoka to give Japan a 2-1 advantage.


Third baseman Lee Beom-ho tied the game in the 7th inning on a solo homerun. Japan answered right back by scoring 3 in the 8th and 1 more in the 9th to take a 6-2 lead.


The Korean bullpen was awful and the team looked lethargic in the field. Oh Seung-hwan, Kim Kwang-hyun and Lim Chang-yong combined to surrender 4 runs during the last two innings. To be fair, they didn't get much help in the field. The Korean team committed 3 errors in the game after committing only 2 in the previous 6 games. The Japanese team also committed 3 errors, but the Korean team never really made them pay for any of them. If the Korean team made a mistake, the Japanese pounced all over it.


This is a much better way to promote Korean culture than Dokdo signs.

Next up for the Korean team is Venezuela on Saturday at 8 PM. I'm guessing Hanhwa ace Ryu Hyeon-jin gets the starting nod for Korea.

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