“I want to tell you that it wasn’t easy.”
The Lotte Giants, coached by Larry Sutton, have been struggling lately. With 29 wins (22 losses) on the season, Lotte is on the verge of reaching the 30-win mark and has lost four straight games. They are now five games behind first-place SSG Landers (35 wins, 18 losses and one draw) and 2.5 games behind second-place LG Twins (33 wins, 21 losses and two draws).
The sweep of the KT Wiz at home in Busan from the 6th to the 8th was particularly painful. On the 6th, Park Se-woong pitched six innings of two-run ball, but was held in check by opposing starter Ko Young-pyo (one run in seven innings) in a 1-4 loss.토토사이트
They also lost in extra innings on the 7th and 8th. On the 7th, Charlie Barnes pitched seven innings of one-run ball, but the bats didn’t come alive, and the final run was scored on a wild pitch by Kim Do-gyu.
On the eighth, he gave up the win after 289 minutes of hard work. After falling behind 0-5, they bounced back with a five-run seventh inning and a dramatic tiebreaker in the bottom of the ninth, only to fall victim to a squeeze bunt in the top of the 12th.
Sutton must have been disappointed. “I’ll tell you it wasn’t easy, it was definitely a disappointing game,” Sutton said ahead of the Samsung Lions game at Samsung Lions Park in Daegu on 9 September.
“But Barnes and Park made quality starts and fought hard. The players fought hard in the previous day’s match as well. Two of the three matches were lost by one point,” he encouraged the players.
“We want to go beyond ‘Bomde’ to ‘Topde’. To get there, they need to overcome the crisis. Sutton also sees the sweep against KT as a step on Lotte’s path to becoming a stronger team.
“Looking at the positives, we showed the championship culture we want to create, playing like a championship team. Our players didn’t give up. Even though we lost, I think our identity, our DNA, came out of the series stronger.”