Kia Tigers left-hander Eric Lauer was a hard-luck loser in the third game of the Korean Series, when his team went down 4-2 against the Samsung Lions in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) championship round.
Lauer allowed just two runs on five hits in five innings at Daegu Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, some 235 kilometers southeast of Seoul, Friday night, but two of those hits were solo home runs by Lee Sung-gyu and Kim Young-woong. The Tigers still lead the best-of-seven series 2-1, but the Lions’ bats woke up Friday with four homers overall.
Lauer had wanted revenge against the Lions after getting roughed up by them in his KBO debut on Aug. 11. He said Saturday he wasn’t upset about his performance the previous night, because it was just the case of good hitters doing their job.
“Overall, I felt like I was throwing the ball where I wanted to,” Lauer said. “I was keeping the hitters off balance pretty well. I’d be more disappointed if they weren’t good pitches. Sometimes, good hitters just put a good sw
ing on a good pitch. I’m disappointed generally to give up a home run, but sometimes you’ve got to tip your cap to the hitter and say you did a good job.”
Lauer, who only joined the Lions in August as an injury replacement, said he now has “a lot better idea of how this league’s hitters are going to react to my pitches.”
“In the first game (on Aug. 11), I kind of just came in, and I was reacting to them rather than attacking the hitters,” he added. “So yesterday, I felt a lot better about how I attacked and kept the game under my control.”
With that in mind, Lauer said he’d be ready to start a potential Game 6 on Tuesday if the series goes that far.
“I want to pitch Game 6. I want to pitch as many games as I can,” he said. “It’s just fun. At this point in the season, when everything’s on the line, you want to be ready to go every day. So Game 6 is definitely something that I’m hoping for.”
Lauer later caught himself and said it’d be better if the Tigers could just win the title in five games.
“I mean, i
n a perfect world we wouldn’t have to even get to Game 6,” Lauer said with a laugh. “I don’t know. It’s a tough one. I think a lot’s riding on today on whether or not that Game 6 comes.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency