Korean Baseball Picks & Predictions For Upcoming Match

The Korean Baseball Organization has had its gameplay on for a few weeks now, and this weekend will see at least five games being played. Here are our predictions and bets for the games slated for July 10th. 

Doosan Bears v. Lotte Giants

The Bears have just finished a series where they won against the LG Twins. This confidence alone should suffice for the Bears to play a good game on the road. Their main player will be Chris Flexen, who is at 3-3 with a 4.18 ERA and 3.5 FIP. While Flexen has lost three of his four starts, all of them were at home. Each of his wins this season were away from home, and when the defense of his team was crumbling. His previous game on the road was when he went six innings and allowed only 2 runs in seven hits, and walked none. His away performance is stellar this season. 

At home, he gave up six runs in four innings, and only struck out one and walked two, allowing nine hits in the innings he played. Given that he succeeds on the road, you can expect him to pick up his gameplay. His luck seems a bit off this season, given that his FIP is better than his ERA. Another important thing to note - he has already defeated the Lotte Giants earlier in this season. This was also an away game. 

The other side has Seo Jun-won taking up the brunt of the work. He is currently 4-1 with an ERA of 3.95. His ERA has increased slightly with his two starts against the Bears. He was given a no-decision in his previous two starts against them. While playing at home, he allowed five runs in five innings, struck out two and walked four. He only had one strikeout and one walk in the game.

My prediction lies strongly with the Bears. Their gameplay away from home has been phenomenal, and Flexen has dominated each one of these matches well and won them with a margin of at least two runs. You can bet -1.5 on the Bears. 

Samsung Lions v. KT Wiz

While the Lions didn’t play a great game against the Kiwoom Heroes, that could mainly be attributed to Eric Jokisch playing for the Heroes. The Lions are currently in good shape and have been accumulating runs with ease. Heo Yoon-dong will be the main player for the Lions and has had a fantastic start to his rookie season. He is currently at 2-0 with a 3.60 ERA. But he does have a FIP of 6.15, which is more out of luck than anything else. His stats with walking are 5.4 batters per nine innings, and he has struck out just four per nine innings. He has been able to play a fairly damage-controlling game, but the KT defense might be too good for him to withstand.

He has allowed at least two runs in every start in the games this season and hasn’t managed to go past five innings of work. Looking at the Lions, they have a great roster. But it isn’t easy to forget that they lost to the Kiwoom Heroes 6-0. Yoon-dong, who has started five games so far, has some below-average states of 1.6 WHIP, which doesn’t inspire too much confidence. He has been a part of the winning side twice and never on the losing side.

KT Wiz will bring out William Cuevas, who is 3-2 with a 5.06 ERA. His gameplay will be much better now that he has recovered fully from his injury, for which he had to take a month off. His stats post his return are 2-0 in three games and has reached the seventh inning in just two out of the three games. Just like the rest of his team, he struggled in his most recent game against the Kiwoom Heroes. He allowed five runs on seven hits and struck three and walked one. That game saw a total of 16 runs. His last start yielded 13 runs total to the game. 

My prediction lies with the KT Wiz. The Lions’ Heo Yoon-dong isn’t going to be able to keep up his lucky streak. He’s walked a lot more than he is struck a lot more than he’s stuck out, and he’s allowing 1.1 home runs per nine innings. Cuevas is a much better bet to go with as he has played a more consistent game over this season.