Doosan Bears ride eight-game winning streak into third place

The Doosan Bears, famous for their late season surges up the KBO standings, rode an 8-game winning streak into third place this week, pulling two games clear of the Lotte Giants and NC Dinos and inching closer to the leading LG Twins and SSG Landers

Doosan Bears outfielder Jung Soo-bin runs the bases during a game against the Kiwoom Heroes at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul on Sunday. [YONHAP]

The Doosan Bears have started early this year.

The Seoul club, famous for its late season surges up the KBO standings, rode their first eight-game winning streak in five years into third place this week, pulling two games clear of the Lotte Giants and NC Dinos and inching closer to the leading LG Twins and SSG Landers.

The back-to-back sweeps were helped by some good scheduling, with the Bears and Kiwoom Heroes the only two teams in the KBO last week to actually play all six games, as rain cancelations disrupted the majority of games on Tuesday and Friday.

The rain was not an issue for the Bears, however, who swept the 10th-place Samsung Lions in the midweek series — 5-3, 7-4, 5-1 — and then brushed aside the seventh-place Heroes over the weekend — 10-0, 5-2, 9-2.

The first-place Twins maintained their comfortable 2.5-game lead over the second-place SSG Landers despite splitting their four games this week two-two.

The Twins started the week with a series against the eighth-place KT Wiz, missing Tuesday’s game and losing Wednesday’s 8-4, before coming back to split the series with an 8-7 win on Thursday.

The result was the same over the weekend, when the Twins and fourth-place Giants missed Friday’s game, LG won Saturday’s 12-3 and the Giants took Sunday 7-4.

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The second-place Landers lost their midweek series to the sixth-place Kia Tigers, missing Tuesday’s game due to rain and then dropping the following two games: 17-3, 7-6. After another rain cancelation on Friday, the Landers rallied for a tight 9-7 win against the ninth-place Hanwha Eagles on Saturday only to lose again, 7-0, on Sunday.

The fourth-place Giants and fifth-place NC Dinos also posted disappointing results over the last week.

The Giants failed to pull ahead in either of their series, also splitting their midweek bout with the Eagles — 3-5, 4-3 — before they took on the Twins over the weekend. The Dinos fared worse. The Changwon, South Gyeongsang club took two losses on the trot against the Kiwoom Heroes during the week — 8-4, 2-0 — rallying for a 5-4 consolation game on Thursday with the series already lost.

Moving into the weekend, the Dinos then lost the two games they were able to play against the Lions without scoring a single run: 8-0, 7-0.

The final game of the weekend pit the Tigers against the Wiz in the only other full three-game series, with the Gwangju club sweeping the Wiz: 6-2, 7-0, 5-1.

With surprisingly mixed results over the last 10 games, the momentum appears to have shifted away from the majority of the leading clubs going into the All-Star break. The Bears lead the league over the last 10 games with eight wins and three losses, with the Twins and following with a 7-3 line.

The Eagles, all the way down in ninth place, also have a 7-3 line, with the sixth-place Tigers the only other club above breaking even, with six wins and four losses.

The Giants are 5-for-5, with the seventh-place Heroes and eighth-place Wiz riding a 4-6 line. Unsurprisingly, the 10th-place Lions have managed just three wins over the last 10 games, but the second-place Landers, a team that led the league only a few weeks ago, are in the same position.

Only the fifth-place Dinos have performed worse, with just two wins in the last 10 games and now just a single game separating the Changwon club from the sixth-place Tigers.

The KBO returns Tuesday for the final series before the All-Star break, as the Bears look to continue their success against the SSG Landers in Incheon, the Eagles head to Seoul to take on the Twins, the Giants and Dinos face off in Changwon, the Lions play the Tigers in Gwangju and the Wiz and Heroes face off in what may prove to be the only complete series of the week under the dome in Seoul.

The All-Star break begins with the Futures League All-Star game on Friday, with the KBO All-Star game on Saturday at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan on Saturday. The league will break for a week, returning to normal scheduled games on July 21 as the Landers take on the Twins in a first vs. second place clash.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]