One month has passed since the opening of the regular season. However, the rankings are still tight. The No. 1 ranking KIA Tigers is firmly in the lead, while the KT Wiz, once considered the "candidate" for the title, is at the bottom of the standings. However, different teams are continuing their rollercoaster ride, riding on the trend of consecutive wins and losses. Even considering that it is still early in the season, the competition for the ranking is fiercer than ever.
The fall of KT, which was the runner-up team of the Korean Series last year and was considered one of the three candidates to win the championship this year, is somewhat surprising. It was expected to do well again this year with a solid mound and experienced fielders, but when it opened the lid, it showed the opposite performance to expectations. KT is struggling with the injuries of its main players, pitchers who are not in good condition, and off-line batters. The weekend away series in Busan also ended with one draw and two losses, with the last-place Lotte Giants, who won two games against KT, going up to ninth and KT falling to 10th. 안전놀이터
KT, once the most promising candidate for the top spot, is facing an unexpected difficulty. However, the overall game of the league is "unpredictable." The team that stood out the most at the beginning of the season was the Hanwha Eagles. Hanwha, which has been reborn as a confident candidate for the fifth round from the lowest rank in 10,000 years, showed that its prediction was not wrong in the beginning of the season.
Hanwha, which rose to No. 1 by making a splash in the first 10 games of the season, has only four wins and 12 losses in 16 games it played in April. In terms of monthly ranking in April, it ranks 10th and last. From No. 1 in March to No. 10 in April, it is an extreme move.
On the contrary, some teams have revived from the worst. It is the Samsung Lions.
Samsung had no hope until early April. It ranked eighth with two wins, one draw and five losses in March. Samsung, which had been at the bottom of the standings, had 11 wins and six losses in April and seven wins and three losses in the last 10 games, ranking first in monthly performance among the 10 teams. Its performance that plunged to the bottom of the standings is now tying with the LG Twins for fifth place. Samsung has better April performance than Kia, which ranks first.
KIA, which had two wins and one loss in its big match against the NC Dinos last weekend, is the only one leading the league with a winning percentage of 0.708, but the top performance is even more difficult to predict. The gap between second-ranked NC and fifth-ranked LG-Samsung is only two games apart, third-ranked Kiwoom Heroes is 1.5 games apart from second-ranked NC, and fourth-ranked SSG is also 1.5 games apart. LG and Samsung are 0.5 games apart from fourth-ranked SSG. seventh-ranked Hanwha and eighth-ranked Doosan are also capable of counterattacking each other. They are two and three games apart from fifth-ranked teams, respectively, so if they follow the trend, their ranking can be reversed at any time.
It is an early season in which each team has not played 30 games yet, but it is still quite unusual. It is in line with the expectations of on-site coaches to some extent. Most of the coaches predicted that "the mid-tier competition will be even fiercer this year," but it is actually unfolding in that trend. If the fall of KT and Lotte to the bottom was unexpected, NC's pursuit of the lead and Kiwoom's counterattack on the top, which was considered the weakest, also seemed to be completely contrary to expectations. Currently, only KIA and LG are mentioned as candidates for the championship and the most likely candidates for the top of the list among the top five teams.
On the contrary, if the teams with the maximum number of wins at the beginning continue to compete for the thin ice rankings at the end of the season, it may be rather advantageous. It's the beginning of the season, but once you win as much as you can, you can reduce the last variable as much as you can.