Young Lions slugger hopes aggressive approach keeps paying off

Samsung Lions third baseman Kim Young-woong has three career postseason home runs, and all of them have come at home, Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, some 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The third dinger came in a crucial Game 3 of the Korean Series against the Kia Tigers on Friday night, giving his team a 2-0 lead in their 4-2 victory. The Lions are in the win column in the best-of-seven Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) championship round after losing the first two games.

“I feel more comfortable at home because I’ve just played more games here than elsewhere,” Kim said before Game 4 in Daegu on Saturday. “I feel like I can see the ball better here than other places.”

In the first two games at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field in Gwangju, about 270 km south of Seoul, Kim batted 1-for-9 with six strikeouts.

The 21-year-old refused to blame his early struggles on jitters of playing in his first Korean Series.

“I don’t think I was nervous,” he said. “But I think I needed to get out of my own way. I think
I might have been grabbing the bat a little too tight.”

After Friday’s win, Kim said he and his teammates talked about how their aggression paid off with their four-homer outburst, and they should stick to the same mantra against James Naile, the Tigers’ starter for Game 4 who held the Lions to a run in five innings in Game 1 on Monday.

“We said we can’t be too passive against Naile this time,” Kim said after the Lions’ hitters went down flailing against Naile’s sweepers in the series opener. “We said we have to go up there swinging. And since this is our second meeting, we feel more confident now. We don’t know how the game will play out, but at least we have that confidence in ourselves.”

Kim said his own confidence at the plate has carried over to the field. He made a crucial play to get the final out in Friday’s win, as he handled a tricky grounder off the bat of Park Chan-ho and stepped on the bag for the force with the bases loaded.

The pitch before that, Park had pulled a hard line drive just foul
over the left field line.

“After that liner, I figured the next ball would come in my direction,” Kim recalled. “I wanted to make sure I would keep anything hit down the line in front of me. There could have been some funny hop, and I wanted to turn my body toward the bag so that the ball would drop in that direction. I got my glove down, and luckily, the ball ended up there.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency