Thursday was the gold-silver-bronze-or-nothing semifinal between one-time losers, the U.S. and South Korea. I’m an American, but having lived most of my life in Japan and spent much of that time writing about Japanese baseball, I pull for my local guys.
Still, my heart was with Korea tonight, because South Korean pro baseball cares about the Olympics and MLB doesn’t, and because Korea-Japan games make the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry look like something people started talking about yesterday.
Like the Boston and New York thing, Japan and South Korea is regional and political. Dylan Hernandez explains it well in this piece for the Los Angeles Times.
But it was not to be. As the game neared its painful conclusion, sending South Korea into Saturday afternoon’s bronze medal game against the Dominican Republic, the camera lingered on former Orioles and Phillies first baseman Kim Hyun Soo, a veteran of South Korea’s 2008 Olympic gold medal team. At 33, Kim had to know this was his last Olympic rodeo with no chance of going out with a bang against the team South Korea craves to beat, Japan.
United States 7, South Korea 2
At Yokohama Stadium: Joe Ryan allowed a run over 4-1/3 innings, allowing just one run thanks to a sparkling double play by second baseman and 2014 Olympic silver medal-winning speed skater Eddy Alvarez to end the fifth.
Ryan Ryder delivered 1-2/3 innings of scoreless relief, with two of those outs coming on that double play. It was a close game as long as lefty Lee Eui Lee remained on the mound for Korea. The 19-year-old, the only KBO starter allowing fewer than 6.5 hits per nine innings, made some mistakes and it cost him.
The U.S. scraped out a run in the second on a one-out Mark Kolozsvary walk, a stolen base and a two-out Jack Lopez single. Lopez came within a hair of going to third on the throw, when South Korea left both second and third uncovered, but a video review ruled him out on a desperate diving tag as he approached second.
Kim Hye Seong singled with one out in the third and went to second on a bunt by the leadoff hitter but the South Koreans ran out of outs.
Jamie Westbrook capitalized on a mistake from Lee with two outs in the fourth to make it 2-0 U.S. South Korea got a run back in the fifth when Joe Ryan hit a batter with one out and surrendered back-to-back singles. With KT Wiz-kid Kang Baek Ho up, reliever Ryan Ryder came in and second baseman Eddy Alvarez got the U.S. out of a jam by starting a tremendous inning-ending double play.
Lee left the mound after throwing 88 pitches over five innings, and the game went south in a hurry. With one and one out, Choi Wonjoon surrendered singles to Westbrook and Kolozsvary. Now 3-1, Choi loaded the bases with a walk and left the mound. Jack Lopez singled in a run, another scored on a groundout, and Tyler Austin singled in two to make it 7-1.
Scott McGough allowed an unearned run on a single, a double, and an error in the seventh, but struck out the last two batters he faced in the inning to avoid further damage.
So now it’s Japan-USA in Saturday night’s gold medal game, and I’m going to guess that SoftBank Hawks right-hander Nick Martinez will get the start for the Americans.
Masahiro Tanaka pitched against the U.S. on Monday and was really good for a few innings until he wasn’t, and I don’t know if manager Atsunori Inaba will try him again. Yudai Ono has pitched one inning, Kodai Senga two, and Masato Morishita five, all three are starters for their clubs in Japan, so I suppose we’ll see some combination of those three.
