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LG Twins beat defending champs Doosan Bears to open 2020 KBO season

May 5, 2020

The LG Twins defeated the defending champions Doosan Bears 8-2 to start the 2020 regular season in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) on Tuesday, powered by the first home run of the season from their captain.

Kim Hyun-soo blasted his fourth career Opening Day home run for the Twins at Jamsil Stadium and drove in three runs, as the Twins got the better of their Seoul rivals. Kim’s was the KBO’s very first long ball of the new season.

It was one of five games played across the nation, as baseball officially returned following weeks of intrasquad and preseason games.

Cha Woo-chan of the LG Twins pitches against the Doosan Bears in their Korea Baseball Organization season opening game at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul on May 5, 2020. (Yonhap)

The regular season was initially slated to start on March 28, but the season was delayed due to the coronavius pandemic. South Korea has seen a steady decline in new cases, with no locally transmitted cases reported over the past two days.

The Twins opened the scoring in the bottom second, with Kim Min-sung’s RBI double off starter Raul Alcantara cashing in Park Yong-taik, who came all the way from first after drawing a walk.

Kim Hyun-soo’s two-run jack in the third, just clearing the fence in left, put the Twins ahead 3-0.

The Bears got a run back in the top fourth, with Kim Jae-hwan’s towering homer to deep right field against starter Cha Woo-chan.

They wasted a one-on, two-out opportunity in the top seventh. After a walk and a single, Oh Jae-won grounded into a rally-killing, 6-4-3 double play.

Kim Hyun-soo delivered an insurance run with a double off the right-center wall in the bottom eighth, capping off his three-RBI day.

The Twins added four runs in the same eighth inning for good measure, two of them courtesy of two wild pitches by reliever Chae Ji-seon, and the last two on Yoo Kang-nam’s two-run double.

Cha, starting ahead of two American aces Tyler Wilson and Casey Kelly, held the Bears to Kim’s solo shot, while striking out seven and walking two.

Three LG relievers limited the Bears to a run — from a sacrifice fly by Kim Jae-ho — on three hits.

Wilson and Kelly will not be available for the opening three-game series. They were quarantined for 14 days in late March upon returning from the United States — they had gone home after spring training due to the coronavirus outbreak here — and they are still ramping back up for their usual regular season load.