KBO regular season ends quietly with no change to final standings

The 2023 KBO regular season ended Tuesday with no change to the standings and the pennant-winning LG Twins already crowned two weeks earlier. The playoffs begin immediately Thursday, with the Doosan Bears taking on the NC Dinos in the Wildcard Series

From left: LG Twins Manager Youm Kyoung-youb, pitcher Im Chan-kyu, outfielder Kim Hyun-soo and captain Oh Ji-hwan pose with the KBO pennant trophy at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul on Sunday. [YONHAP]

The 2023 KBO regular season ended Tuesday with no change to the standings and the pennant-winning LG Twins already crowned two weeks earlier. The playoffs begin immediately Thursday, with the Doosan Bears taking on the NC Dinos in the Wildcard Series.

It was a quiet end to a dramatic final few weeks of KBO action, with just four teams playing — the SSG Landers beat the Doosan Bears 5-0 and the Kia Tigers beat the NC Dinos 7-1 — and neither game having any impact on the final standings whatsoever.

Three of those teams have tickets to the playoffs, with the third-place Landers, fourth-place Dinos and fifth-place Bears joining the second-place KT Wiz and first-place Twins in the postseason.

That it comes down to those five teams is of little surprise. The Twins locked in their first pennant in 29 years two weeks ago, with the Wiz securing their place a week later.

The Landers, Dinos and Bears all looked likely to fill up the playoff roster — the Tigers did have an outside chance until a few days ago, but trailed well behind the pack — with the three teams all tied in third place as recently as Saturday.

But while the Bears — known as the KBO’s fall ball club, although perhaps not so much this year — and the Dinos took a tumble, the defending champion Landers rallied to climb up the table with eight wins over their last 10 games to finish the season on the best form in the league. That gives the Incheon club a 1.5-game lead over the Dinos, who lead the Bears by a game.

There was one opportunity for movement on Tuesday. Had the Dinos beat the Tigers and the Landers lost to the Bears, the Dinos would have been able to squeeze past the Landers and steak third.

Had the Bears beat the Landers and the Dinos still lost, that would have seen the two teams tie on points, but with a perfectly split 8-8-0 head-to-head record on the season. In that case it would have come down to runs scored and the Dinos still had the edge.

But while the regular season spluttered to an end on Tuesday, the big story remains the Twins’ historic victory. This is the Twins’ first regular season title since 1994. That year they also went on to win the Korean Series, and it was also the last time the Seoul club lifted the championship trophy.

The Twins are one of the five remaining teams that founded the KBO back in 1982, although at the time they were owned by broadcaster MBC and played as the MBC Chungryong.

Alongside the OB Bears, now the Doosan Bears, the Haitai Tigers, now the Kia Tigers, the Lotte Giants, the Samsung Lions and the now-defunct Sammi Superstars, the Twins were there from the very birth of the KBO — although they finished third in that opening season.

Over the years, the Twins have seen little success when it comes to silverware.

Although they saw some results when the KBO played with different formats — in 1983 they won the second half split and in 2000 they topped the Magic League, one of two four-team leagues at the time — the Twins have only actually topped a full-length, all-team KBO table twice, in 1990 and 1994.

On both occasions, the Twins went on to win the Korean Series title as well, adding the championship to the pennant for the only four major trophies the club has ever won.

But as the big insult as far as the Twins are concerned — and one that the club and its fans have been very happy to set straight this year — is that while the Twins have floundered, their stadium rivals the Doosan Bears have seen significant success. Since that 1994 Twins pennant, the Bears have topped the table four times and taken the Korean Series title five times, missing out on the playoffs just three times between 2004 and 2021.

The Twins — who set up shop in Seoul in 1982, three years before the Bears moved to the capital and 26 years before the Kiwoom Heroes even existed — are now finally back on top and hungry to add their first Korean Series title in 29 years to a presumably quite dusty trophy cupboard.

But the Twins still have a few weeks to wait before they get their chance to fight for that title.

The KBO operates a ladder playoff system, with each of the five qualifying teams getting a bye to a different stage of the postseason depending on where they finished the regular season.

The Bears will first face the Dinos in the Wildcard Series starting Thursday. The Dinos get an automatic one-game advantage and the right to play at home down in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, meaning that the Bears have to win on Thursday and then come back and win again on Friday to stay alive in the competition.

No team has ever managed the feat before, with even a tie in the opening game ending the tournament for the Bears.

The winner of that series then advances to the first round of the playoffs to face the Landers at Incheon SSG Landers Field in Incheon starting on Oct. 22. That five-game series could run through Oct. 28 if needed, moving to the Wildcard winner’s stadium for Game 3 and 4, and then back to Incheon for Game 5.

The winner of that series advances to face the Wiz in the first round of the playoffs at KT Wiz Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi starting on Oct. 30. Also a five-game series, the second round follows the same format as the first round and could run as late as Nov. 5.

Finally, the winner of that game will get the chance to face the Twins in the seven-game Korean Series at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul from Nov. 7. The series will run for two games in Jamsil, and then move to the opposing team’s stadium for two games — unless the Bears manage the impossible and advance through every other round of the playoffs, in which case it will all be at Jamsil — before returning to Seoul for the last three games.

The winner of the Korean Series could be crowned as early as Nov. 11 or as late as Nov. 15, depending on how one-sided the Korean Series turns out to be.

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