For seven innings on September 20, the KT Wiz looked like a team cruising toward a routine win over the Doosan Bears at KT Wiz Park in Suwon, South Korea. Starter Ko Young-pyo was dealing, the offense had built a commanding 9-1 lead, and the first-place club appeared to be quietly padding its cushion atop the KBO League standings. Then came the eighth inning, and for a few tense minutes, that comfortable lead nearly evaporated entirely. By the time the dust settled, KT had won, 9-8 — but only after surviving a seven-run rally from Doosan’s bullpen-battered lineup, and only with the help of a 31-year-old infielder’s first back-to-back home runs in more than four years and a 22-year-old rookie reliever’s first career save.
The result kept KT in first place in the KBO League with a record of 79 wins, 4 draws and 47 losses, extending the club’s lead over the second-place Samsung Lions (76-3-52) to 3.5 games. In a league where the regular-season champion earns a direct berth into the Korean Series — skipping the entire preliminary postseason bracket that every other contender has to survive — a game like this one carries weight far beyond a single box score line.
A Career Journeyman Finds His Moment
The headline performance belonged to Jang Jun-won, KT’s 31-year-old shortstop, who was written into the lineup that day as the No. 9 hitter — a spot reserved, in most lineups, for a player valued more for his glove than his bat. Jang did not stay quiet in that role for long. In the second inning, he drove a three-run home run to put KT firmly in control. He was not done. In the third inning, he added a two-run shot, giving him a pair of home runs in back-to-back innings and five RBIs on the afternoon.
What made the feat remarkable wasn’t just the power display itself, but the gap since Jang had last done anything like it. According to South Korean outlets tracking the milestone, this was the first time Jang had hit multiple home runs in a single game since June 24, 2022 — a stretch of 1,549 days. For context, that is more than four full KBO seasons of at-bats in which Jang never strung together two home runs in the same game.
Jang’s path to this moment has been anything but smooth. He was originally drafted by the LG Twins in the second round of the 2014 KBO draft and made his professional debut the following year. For years, he was a depth infielder in LG’s system — the kind of player fans recognize but rarely spotlight. His career took a turn on May 21, 2022, when LG traded him to KT Wiz in exchange for a fifth-round pick in the 2023 draft, a modest return that reflected how the industry viewed him at the time: useful, but unlikely to be a difference-maker.
The years since the trade have been defined as much by injury as by opportunity. Jang has battled a torn anterior cruciate ligament, a torn posterior cruciate ligament, and an ankle fracture during his time with KT — the kind of injury history that derails many infielders’ careers before they ever get a signature moment. That is what made September 20 stand out. At 31, in a lineup slot that signaled modest offensive expectations, Jang delivered the best power display of his season on the biggest defensive stage his team could offer: a home game against a divisional rival, with first place in the balance.
Ko Young-pyo’s Gem, and a Lead That Looked Safe
None of Jang’s fireworks would have mattered as much if KT’s pitching staff hadn’t set the table. Starter Ko Young-pyo turned in a dominant outing, working seven innings and allowing just a single earned run. It was the kind of start that, on most days, all but guarantees a win — efficient, deep into the game, and giving KT’s bullpen a light workload heading into the late innings. The performance was good enough to push Ko’s season win total to 13 against 6 losses, a mark that places him among the league’s more productive starting pitchers in a pennant-race season.
On the other side, Doosan starter Park Shin-ji had a night to forget. He lasted just 1⅓ innings, allowing five runs — four of them earned — as KT’s offense, powered by Jang’s early outburst, jumped on Doosan from the outset. It was Park’s second loss of the season, and for much of the afternoon, it looked like Doosan’s day would be defined entirely by that early collapse. With Ko Young-pyo cruising and KT’s lead sitting at 9-1 entering the late innings, the game had the look of a laugher — the kind of result that gets filed away and forgotten by the time the next day’s slate begins.
The Eighth Inning That Changed Everything
Baseball has a way of punishing complacency, and KT’s bullpen found that out the hard way in the eighth inning. What began as mop-up duty in a comfortable, seemingly decided game turned into a full-blown crisis. Doosan’s lineup, given new life against KT’s relief corps, erupted for seven runs in a single inning — turning a laugher into a nail-biter and cutting KT’s once-commanding 9-1 lead down to a single run, 9-8, with outs still to be recorded.
For a first-place team fighting to hold off a determined Samsung club just 2.5 games back entering the day, that kind of inning is the sort of nightmare scenario that can swing not just a single game, but the psychological momentum of an entire pennant race. A blown eight-run lead against a divisional opponent would have been a gut-punch loss, the type that lingers in a clubhouse for days and invites second-guessing of bullpen usage down the stretch.
It did not happen. With the tying run in scoring position and the pressure at its peak, KT turned to a name most fans outside of the organization’s own scouting department would not have recognized before that day: Kim Jung-woon, a 22-year-old rookie sidearm pitcher. Thrust into the highest-leverage spot of the entire game, Kim did not flinch. Working 1⅓ innings, he struck out four Doosan hitters and did not allow the Bears to complete their comeback. When the final out was recorded, Kim Jung-woon had his first career save — delivered in as difficult a circumstance as a rookie reliever could ask for.
Why This Game Means More Than One Win in the Standings
American readers unfamiliar with the KBO League’s postseason structure might reasonably wonder why a single September win over a non-division-leading opponent generates this much attention. The answer lies in how the league rewards its regular-season champion. Unlike Major League Baseball, where even the team with the best regular-season record still has to survive a gauntlet of playoff rounds, the KBO League grants its regular-season winner a bye directly into the Korean Series — the league’s equivalent of the World Series. Every other qualifying team has to fight through a preliminary postseason bracket first, often facing elimination in win-or-go-home formats before they ever get a shot at the top seed.
That structural incentive is why games in late September carry a different kind of tension than they might in a league where the standings only determine playoff seeding rather than an outright bye. A team sitting 3.5 games ahead in mid-September with a manageable number of games remaining is in a commanding, but not unassailable, position. Every game against a divisional rival that turns from a laugher into a near-disaster and back again is a reminder of just how quickly that cushion can shrink if a bullpen has a bad week.
For Samsung, sitting 3.5 games back after KT’s win, the message from September 20 was double-edged. On one hand, KT’s bullpen showed real vulnerability, conceding seven runs in a single inning against a Doosan club that, while competitive, was not fighting for the title race itself. On the other hand, KT found a way to win anyway — surviving the kind of inning that, in a tighter pennant race, could easily have been the turning point that hands the lead to a chasing team. Instead, it became a testament to organizational depth: a struggling bullpen bailed out by a rookie nobody had built a reputation around before that afternoon.
A Story of Persistence, Layered Into a Single Box Score
What elevates this particular game above a standard pennant-race win is how many individual storylines converged inside it. Jang Jun-won’s back-to-back home runs were not simply a power outburst from a hot bat — they were the product of a career that has wound through a franchise trade, multiple significant injuries, and years spent in a lineup slot that rarely draws headlines. For a player who has had to fight his way back from torn knee ligaments and a fractured ankle just to remain a productive everyday player, a five-RBI afternoon in a pennant-deciding month is the kind of moment that validates years of rehabilitation work that mostly happens away from any spotlight.
Kim Jung-woon’s save tells a different but complementary story — the story of opportunity meeting readiness. Rookies are not typically handed the ball in a one-run game with the tying run threatening to complete a stunning comeback against a first-place team. That KT’s coaching staff trusted a 22-year-old with almost no established track record in exactly that spot, and that the rookie responded by striking out four of the hitters he faced, speaks to both the organization’s confidence in its pitching pipeline and the poise of a young arm under pressure most veterans would find uncomfortable.
Even Ko Young-pyo’s outing, ultimately overshadowed by the bullpen fireworks that followed it, deserves its own recognition. Seven innings and one earned run is exactly the kind of start that keeps a bullpen fresh for a stretch run, and his 13th win of the season keeps him firmly in the conversation among the league’s top starting pitchers this year — a fact that got somewhat buried by the drama that unfolded after he left the game.
The View From Doosan’s Dugout
It would be easy to read this game purely through KT’s lens, but Doosan’s eighth-inning rally deserves its own scrutiny, because it was not a fluke. A team that had just watched its starter get chased after 1⅓ innings and fallen behind by eight runs does not typically claw back to within one without real quality up and down its lineup. The Bears’ ability to string together seven runs against a bullpen that had, up to that point, looked capable of closing out a laugher is a reminder that late-September baseball rarely allows any team — even one fighting for a postseason spot rather than a title — to simply go through the motions. For a Doosan club trying to solidify its own playoff positioning heading into October, an eighth-inning rally that ultimately fell one run short is the kind of near-miss that can cut both ways: encouraging evidence that the lineup can manufacture runs in bunches, paired with the frustration of a game that got away in the final innings despite that effort.
What Comes Next
With the win, KT protected its position at the top of the KBO League standings and reminded both its own fan base and its closest pursuer that even a shaky bullpen inning does not have to be fatal when the rest of the roster steps up. The 3.5-game cushion over Samsung remains comfortable but not insurmountable, and if September 20 proved anything, it is that KT’s margin for error in individual games can shrink dramatically in the span of a single inning.
For Jang Jun-won, the challenge now is building on a signature performance rather than treating it as an isolated highlight after years defined largely by injury recovery. For Kim Jung-woon, the first save is a marker — the kind of outing a young reliever can point back to as proof he belongs in high-leverage situations as the stretch run intensifies. And for KT as a whole, the lesson from September 20 is a familiar one in any pennant race: leads are made to be defended inning by inning, not simply banked the moment a scoreboard looks lopsided. The Wiz survived their toughest test of the week. Whether their bullpen tightens up before the games start mattering even more in October remains the question hanging over the club as it tries to close out the title.