Will Kim Do-young (21) of the Kia Tigers and Victor Reyes (30) of the Lotte Giants set a new record in Busan on Sunday.
The Lotte Giants and the KIA Tigers will have a regular season showdown of 2024 Shinhan SOL Bank KBO League at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Lotte has secured its upper hand with eight wins, six losses and one draw in its matches.
The two teams are currently spending the end of the season far from a ranking battle. KIA won the regular league title early on the 17th, with seven games left before the end of the season. Lotte also lost the match against Suwon KT Wiz on the 24th, disappearing its dream of reaching the semifinals.
Still, Kia and Lotte are exerting their utmost efforts to set individual records for players. These are Kim Do-young’s 40 (homer)-40 (homer) and Reyes’ record for the most hits in a single season. If the two records come out in a single day, it would be interesting.
Kim has already set a new record for the most goals scored in a single season following his first monthly record of 10 to 10 (homerun) to 30 (stealing) and the youngest to 30 to 30 this season. On top of that, he is now aiming to join the 40-40 club, which is only once in the history of the KBO. 토토사이트
Eric Thames (47 homers and 40 steals) of the NC Dinosaurs was the only player who achieved the 40-40 mark in the KBO league in 2015. If Kim achieves this, he will be the youngest player to achieve this record and the first Korean player to ever achieve it. Having already stolen bases, Kim now has only two homers left. After securing the No. 1 spot, Kia has assigned him to the No. 1 spot in the batting order to support Kim’s record, giving him many opportunities to bat.
Kim Do-young raised expectations by recording his 38th home run and 40th stolen base of the season against the Gwangju Samsung Lions on the 23rd. However, although he was not bad with a batting average of 0.333 (4 hits in 12 at-bats) in the next three games, no home runs have been made. In the match against the Hanwha Eagles in Daejeon on the 27th, he had no hits in four at-bats, including an infield grounder.
This year, Kim played in 15 games against Lotte, showing strong performance with a batting average of 0.386 and three home runs. However, he is relatively weak against Charlie Barnes, the left-hander who will start the game on Friday. Although he has one home run this year, he has only one hit in eight at-bats for a three-year batting average of 0.167 (three hits in 18 at-bats).
Reyes is also challenging to break a new record. It is the record of the most number of hits (201) recorded in a single season by Nexen’s Seo Geon-chang in 2014. To this end, Reyes has to add three more hits in the remaining two games. Lotte is also helping Reyes set a new record by placing him as the second batter.
Reyes, who remained silent with no hits in three at-bats against Hanwha in Daejeon on the 23rd, has six hits in four games since then. He also had a hit in the first inning against NC on the 27th, marking 199 hits in the season. This is tied with the record of a single season of foreign hitters set by Jose Miguel Fernandez of Doosan in 2020. Coincidentally, Seo Geon-chang is in the opponent team KIA in the game on the 28th, which will challenge 200 hits.
Kia Tigers’ starting pitcher Yoon Young-chul was weak with an earned run average of 9.39 in two games against Lotte this year. He allowed three walks on four occasions against Reyes.
Kim Do-young and Reyes have more chances to play even if neither record is posted at the match on Saturday. KIA will have the final match of the season against NC Dinosaurs at its home on Sunday and Lotte on the away game on Oct. 1. Both players can challenge to set records until the very last minute.