Power Rankings Week 13

I'm back in Canada now in Toronto. I know I was expecting it, but I'm kind of disappointed being unable to watch Korean baseball every night like I was doing in Korea. It's like I'm suffering withdrawals. I did see the highlights and I will have to wake up a bit earlier some mornings to catch the tail end of some games on Naver Sports.

Toronto is in 2010 decidedly not a baseball town. With all the immigration that happens through here, the city seems to move more and more and more towards an international feel in all aspects including sports culture. This place is in deep World Cup soccer mode right now as you see flags of soccer countries on people's cars and people honking their horns whenever some country wins a soccer game.

But you hardly see any Blue Jays merchandise and I heard nobody, absolutely nobody complain about the Roy Halliday return to Rogers as a Philly being moved to Philadelphia because of G20 (that's something I can write a whole article on itself). Roy won that game as an away starter in his own stadium and my personal disappointment with this move of this very important game died down when I remembered that Blue Jays are last in attendance and no one would have cared about this game in Toronto anyway.

Side note: I wore my Doosan Bears hat around town and I wonder if anyone knew what it was. If I see anyone wearing any KBO merchandise in Canada or USA I am going stop them and ask if I can take a flick with them.

Anyway, back to Korean baseball and this week's rankings..

Samsung 5-1

Currently on a 5 game winning streak after losing their first game in the Doosan series. Playing solid defensively and scoring a good number of runs. Worrying is their 534 team strike outs which is last in the league.

SK 3-1

Scattering week with cancelled games and one blowout loss (3-10 to LG on Wednesday). But what you do know they're still 3-1 on the week and they're still going to play in the Korea Series this fall. Just lose the green uniforms PLEASE.

Lotte 3-1

Played 4 games this week and won 3 but beat Hanhwa. Nobody wants it if it's too easy. Great stuff getting past the always strong Ryu Hyun-jin last Tuesday. They won this game in extras too. Let's try to beat some contenders next.

Bears 4-2

Slipped in their last two games in the Samsung series but swept Kia sending that team to 6th place. Being able to get back on track is important in the regular season. But Bears' game must be tight by the fall if they want to finally win that Korea Series.

LG 3-3

A typical week for this team capped by the 10-3 stomping of SK mentioned above. Could have swept Kia if it wasn't for Ryu. Decent games are followed by embarrassments and this has been the story for this team all year. And oh yeah, no stars on the stat charts either.

Heroes 3-3

It's hard to beat this year's Samsung team when they're on their game. But they did sweep Kia to even their record out for the week. Even scared Kia into losing all their games in their next series with Doosan. Doug Clark's doing very well leading the team in home runs but they'll still send him home next season.

Hanhwa 1-5

The one win you see was because of Ryu Hyun-jin as usual. But Ryu lost his other game he started this week against Lotte. This team is last, second last, or third last in virtually all team KBO categories.

Tigers 0-6

Winless on the week and mired in the season's longest losing streak. I saw this coming and it's all going to go downhill from here. They don't seem to have the drive this season. They're getting mad and teamwork is failing. Widespread changes need to be changed with this team.