Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Week 10 Rankings, News, and Thoughts

Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks on winning their first Larry O'Brien. I like to hate on the Miami Heat myself, but it is amazing how everyone simply dismissed them as evil and wrong with pro basketball and took Dirk Nowitzki, an import and once invisible superstar, as their flag bearer. Admittedly, James and Bosh simply went to a team they wanted to win in. I don't see how this is different from say, Roy Halladay signing with the Phils.

The NHL finals resume in a few hours and hopefully that can be wrapped up soon so we can all focus on baseball.

Speaking of baseball, here are the rankings and comments from what happened from June 7 to June 12, 2011. This is the 10th week of the 2011 KBO season and there were no rain-outs or cancels in this week.

Top 5:

1. Samsung Lions (5-1)

Sparkling win/loss but they did have an easy week beating up two non-playoff teams, Lotte and Nexen. And Nexen is barely a KBO caliber team. Samsung's starting pitching was cream as they put together a 2.87 ERA to go with those 5 dubs. Offense was not too shabby, as they hit 14 doubles and scored 51 runs.

Week's notables:

Key offensive players: Kim Sang-su.. 0.529 average, 5 RBI's; Choi Hyung-woo.. 0.440 average, 4 RBI's.

Key pitchers: Cha Woo-chan.. 1W, 1ER, 7.2IP; Ken Kadokura.. 1W, 1ER, 7IP.

Outlook for the week: 2 series with 2 current KBO powers Kia and LG will have them out of a playoff spot by week's end.

2. LG Twins (4-2)

Won a series against Hanhwa (easy), then won a series against current rival Kia (hard). Still tied with Kia for 2nd in the league standings after all that however. Offense is what's getting things done with LG. They smashed 5 home runs against Kia in that heavily anticipated weekend series and would have swept if it wasn't for the Yoon Suk-min wall they ran into in game 3.

Week's notables:

Key offensive players: Cho In-seong.. 0.412 average but no hits or home runs; Lee Byung-gyu.. 0.391 average, 3 RBI's.

Key pitchers: Radhames Liz and Ben Jukich.. the only 2 starts to snatch wins but both finishing with ER's in the 3's.

KBO wins leader Park Hyun-joon started against Hanhwa and let in 4 runs in 5.2 innings.

Outlook for the week: Show-down with league leaders SK will reveal what the Twins are made of.

3. SK Wyverns (4-2)

Slip-ups aplenty but still stubbornly looking down at any and all in the KBO in the standings. Lost game 1 of the Doosan series but showed the Bears who's boss pounding them in 7-1 and 6-0 wins right after that. The most alarming game was their loss to the Heroes, which is barely a professional team. SK stole 11 bases this week, the most in the league.

Week's notables:

Key offensive players: Kim Kang-min.. 10 hits, 8 RBI's; Jeong Geun-woo.. 7 hits, 5 RBI's.

Key pitchers: Ko Hyo-joon.. 2W's, 0.00 ER's; Kim Gwang-hyun.. 2W's, 1 ER.

Outlook for week: Two series against the Giants and the Twins will be tough but they will hang onto their 1st place in the standings.

4. Kia Tigers (4-2)

Rumbled into the week riding an 8 game winning streak only to be messed up by heavy hitting LG. Yoon Suk-min righted the wrong with what you'd call a "masterful performance" striking out 10 and letting in just a run in 7 innings of work. A far cry from the disastrous 14 runs allowed mess the night before. Kia might have the best starting rotation in the Korean game.

Week's notables:

Key offensive players: Lee Bum-ho.. 0.381 average, 4 RBI's; Choi Hye-sup.. 0.350 average from 7 hits.

Key pitchers: Yoon Suk-min.. 1W, 1.29 ERA; Aq. Lopez.. 1W, 2.57 ERA; Seo Jae-woong, 1W, 2.70 ERA.

Outlook for week: Will need to make sure to sweep Hanhwa and play tough against a surging Samsung team if they wish to hang onto that tie for second.

5. Lotte Giants (3-3)

Lost a series to a good team (Samsung, 1-2) and won a series against a bad team (Hanhwa, 2-1). The Giants seem to be finding an equilibrium. 3-3 on the week, 2 games below 0.500 and sitting right in the middle of the pack at a clean 5th place with just 2 less wins than 4th place Samsung. Giants look a lot different, but their results are exactly the same with their new manager Yang Seung-ho. Alarming is their collective 6.40 ERA for the week, but it is again balanced by their offense, which smashed a league leading 9 home runs this week to lead the Organization with that stuff.

Week's notables:

Key offensive players: Son Ah-sup (the best name in the KBO) (what up son.. ahhhh sup!).. 0.458 average and 7 ribs; Lee Dae-ho (the Phillsbury Doughboy).. 0.370 average from 10 hits.

Key pitchers: Jang Won-joon.. 7W's on the year, 2 ER's; Ryan Sadowski.. W, 2ER's.

Outlook for week: With series against SK and Nexen, Lotte will need to sweep Nexen and manage to win a game to either stay in 5th or move to 6th. Current 6th place Hanhwa has only 1 less win and falling below Hanhwa will be a spirit breaker.

The Basement:

6. Hanhwa Eagles (2-4)

Karim has 2 hits in 13 at bats. No home runs, no runs scored, 1 RBI.

7. Nexen Heroes (1-5)

They won a game!

8. Doosan Bears (1-5)

Wave the white flag. Even your (very successful) manager doesn't believe.

Newsy News:

Ryan Garko's about to get canned.

Samsung manager Ryu Joong-il declared that Garko was being sent to the minors for conditioning, but used pretty harsh words to describe the situation. Samsung apparently gave Garko all the chances he could get, and that Samsung is searching for another import but have not found anyone better than Garko yet.

Garko is currently hitting 0.248 in 58GP and 1 home run.










1 comment:

Anonymous said...

has Garko gone?