The loser gets a farewell at Jamsil. At the ballpark set to disappear into history after this season, cross-town rivals the LG Twins and Doosan Bears open a do-or-die autumn war.
Doosan holds the edge in past postseason meetings, while LG dominated the regular-season series this year. The two teams meet in Game 1 of the wild card round at 6:30 p.m. on the 14th at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul.
LG, which finished fourth in the regular season, aims to clinch a berth in the best-of-five semi-playoff round with a win in the opener. Fifth-place Doosan, with its back to the wall, is dreaming of a miracle scenario of two straight wins. A draw is enough to send LG through, while Doosan must win both games of the wild card round, which is capped at two games, to advance.
This marks the seventh postseason meeting between the two clubs and the first in five years. It is their first encounter in the wild card round. Doosan leads the all-time postseason series 4-2. LG won two semi-playoff matchups in 1993 and 1998, but Doosan took all four later meetings — the playoffs in 2000 and 2013, and the semi-playoffs in 2020 and 2021. This season told the opposite story, with LG overwhelming Doosan at 11 wins, one draw and four losses.
The outcome is likely to hinge on stamina, momentum and offensive firepower. Unlike LG, which wore itself out pushing to reclaim third place until the final stretch of the season, Doosan locked up fifth place early and has been resting and refining its game plan. The Bears plan to lean on a fresh one-two punch of Kwak Bin and Choi Min-seok to shut down LG's lineup, hoping to repay the pain of their fourth-place exit in the 2024 wild card round, when they lost twice in a row to the kt wiz.
LG's biggest task is reheating a lineup that went cold after September. The need for big offensive numbers is especially acute because Ko Woo-suk, who had anchored the middle of the bullpen with a 1.57 earned run average since his return, cannot pitch in the postseason. Ko pursued a Major League Baseball career in the United States and did not join LG until last month, missing the registration deadline that domestic players must meet to be eligible for postseason play.