Week 2 Rankings and Stuff

Week 2, April 12 to 17

Records in brackets mean the win/loss/tie record for this week.

1. SK Wyverns (5-1) ~ Looked sloppy letting Nexen come back in the 8th inning of the Saturday game. Looked even sloppier letting the 0.385 team beat them the game after. Either way, they still just lost that one game all week. Luckily had an easy start to the week sweeping Hanhwa. Although Hanhwa did play SK close in the middle game of that 3 game series, SK still shut down this team and got the W's. SK is held to a higher standard at this stage though, and I would assume that they are displeased with that one Sunday loss. Their next two series is with LG and Lotte this week and it may get tougher.

2. Samsung Lions (4-2) ~ The weekend series with Doosan was a grind that either team could have taken. Interrupted by a power outage (power outage in Korea? I thought we only had those in Canada), all games were decided by a run with Samsung taking 2 of them. Their weekday series win against a then dominant LG team was more impressive, as they won 2 of those games with an identical 5-1 score and lost the second game by a run. That was an extra innings game and both teams hit 11 hits. Samsung's pitchers are riding the best cumulative ERA in the league at 2.99 (compare that to Hanhwa's 7.23) but other team numbers are pretty middle of the road.

3. Kia Tigers (4-2) ~ Kia has the same record as Samsung but one of those losses was against a very inept Hanhwa team. Soe Jae-woong was moved to the closer role with mixed results: a save in his first appearance which resulted in a pizza party and a blown save loss two days later in the Hanhwa loss which probably resulted in no pizza party. Kia's two foreigners Aq. Lopez and Travis Blackey are winning these games for Kia. Lopez leads the rotation with 3 wins and a 1.57 ERA and Travis got 20K's which is good for best on the team and 2nd best in the league.

4. Doosan Bears (3-2-1) ~ Only 4 errors on the season, Doosan played pretty tight baseball against Hanhwa and Lotte. The only professional baseball team in the world with a tie and an electricity failure this week, this team is going to rely on solid baseball as they are dominant in pretty much nothing besides the small number of errors. Dustin Nippert is doing well. But they are still looking for a new foreign arm and hopefully that person will help this team get their solidly mediocre strikouts (57, 5th in the league), ERA (3.92, 5th in the league), and earned runs (51, 5th in the league) numbers down or they will end up 5th in the league themselves. (This is an 8 team league noobies, 5th place means "that is sucks.")

5. LG Twins (3-3) ~ A re-surging Samsung team spoiled the fun of ending last week in first place for the first time in 100,00,007 days (something like that, as it was widely reported). Either way, none of LG's games got out of hand and I believe they are still contending for a playoff spot at least. Park Hyun-joon is the current ace with Bong Joong-gun not in the picture, but Park did lose his start against Samsung. I don't think this LG team will be elite this year, however.

6. Nexen Heroes (2-4) ~ Kim Seong-tae is performing very well leading the KBO with 23K's. He pitched strong against SK in Nexen's win over SK on Sunday going 6.2 innings and striking out 10. He didn't get the win for the game, however. Kim's career strike out numbers are very good, at a little less than a K per inning. But none of his other stats are very interesting. Not a whole lot to see over here besides this.

7. Lotte Giants (1-4-1) ~ Managed a win on Sunday after starting a week with a 4-4 draw on Tuesday. Losses were the defining theme for the Busan Bombers this week, however. Lee Dae-ho is still elite, but captain Hong Seong-heung is not. Hong's got 13 hits with 50 at bats and has yet to hit a home run. I thought my "Busan Bombers" nickname was pretty clever but I don't think I'm going to be able to use it a whole lot if Busan's offense stays this lame. They only have 5 home runs this year and that's last in the league.

8. Hanhwa Eagles (1-5) ~ Lotte doesn't have to worry about being last in categories a whole lot because of the existence of this team. I talked about what they were last in last week and you might as well look at it again because not much has changed. Hanhwa's pitching also sucks, especially with Ryu Hyun-jin's routinely publicized struggles early. This team is giving up 7.23 runs a game. That is the most in the KBO and Hanhwa Eagles are last again in this week's rankings.