Adam Trigger

THE PLAY: Hanwha Eagles -110

I thought we might see Anders Tolhurst get skipped here and I think that would have been the case had LG won yesterday. 

The reason I say that is it's been a long season for Tolhurst, he threw a bunch of innings in the Blue Jays organization this season prior to coming to Korea and was used as both a starter and reliever.  Since coming to KBO he's been asked to be a starter and asked to pitch deep into games.   Tolhurst was lights out at first but hasn't been as good of late and it appears some arm fatigue is the reason he's been pounded in two of his last three starts.  

Tolhurst will be fine by playoff time because no matter what happens he's going to have a substantial layoff between this start and his next start.  I also don't think there's any reason to push Tolhurst deep into this game because even with a loss here LG controls their own destiny for a regular season title.  I think the goal here for LG is to get whatever they can out of Tolhurst so if the Twins do lose they have their rotation set for the rest of the season.  I also think that could create a scenario where LG uses depth guys if Tolhurst doesn't have it again and the Twins find themselves behind.  Again, a loss here doesn't ruin LG's chances at winning the league.

Hanwha's 2025 KBO Regular Season title run would be over with a loss here.  Hanwha enters play on Saturday trailing LG by 2.5 games so if Hanwha can win this game and on Sunday they can pull themselves to within a half game of LG.  Hanwha would then have three games left while LG would only have two so the Twins would still control their own destiny to at least a tie of the regular season title and #1 seed (which I believe would come down to a one game playoff) so, again THIS game is everything to Hanwha because a loss and it would be nearly impossible to take over the top spot in the final week.

Hanwha goes with Dong-Ju Moon, he's likely the top Korean MLB pitching prospect in the league and has bounced back nicely from a tough year last year.  Moon struggles last year had more to do with workload, he pitched in multiple international tournaments for Korea and then had to work through an arm injury.  Moon worked that out in the offseason and is back to being one of the hardest throwers in KBO with a 3.59 ERA and 1.12 WHIP through 23 starts this year. 

In an effort to make sure Moon didn't go through what Tolhurst is going through right now they have tried to cut down on his innings in the second half.  Moon was skipped toward the end of August giving him an 11 day layoff between starts.  Moon was also skipped last week after a bad start against Kiwoom and ended up coming out of the bullpen for three innings in relief of Cody Ponce.  Moon went 3 scoreless giving up just 1 hit with 4 strikeouts and no walks.  He looked fresh in that outing and I expect Moon to be sharp again here.  

LG and Hanwha have been the two best teams in KBO by a wide margin all season and I fully expect this to be the 2025 Korean Series.  Because of that I think the books look at these two teams as 1A and 1B and price as if there's no difference between the two but I think Hanwha has alot of the small edges in their favor here.  Moon is obviously in a better spot right now to make a start than Tolhurst and LG has incentive to conserve top bullpen arms while Hanwha will use all of their top arms here.  Hanwha has a team bullpen ERA of 3.56 and (for my money) is the best and deepest bullpen unit in the league.  LG has a solid pen as well but a 4.20 team ERA so good but a small step down from Hanwha in that department.

Finally Hanwha will play at home here in front of a sold out crowd in one of the most important games for the Eagles of the past decade.  It should be a tremendous atmosphere for a Hanwha team that is 42-26-2 at home this season and has a .618 home win percentage which is the top mark in KBO.  Love this spot for Hanwha to make the KBO title race very interesting going into the final week of the season.

Play on Hanwha Eagles -110 for 4% (or 4 units)