NC Dinos beat Samsung Lions to open KBO 2025 postseason
The NC Dinos defeated the Samsung Lions in front of 23,550 fans at the Daegu Samsung Lions Park to open the Korea Baseball Organisation (KBO) League's 2025 postseason.
The Lions finished the regular season in fourth place with a 74-68 record and two draws. The Dinos barely beat the KT Wiz in the fifth-place race, clinching their spot with a 7-1 win over the SSG Landers in the last game of the regular season. The Dinos finished with a 71-67 record and six draws, while the Wiz finished with a 71-68 record and five draws. The KT Wiz stayed in the race until the last day thanks to a 6-6 draw against the Hanwha Eagles on Friday, October 3. Trailing 6-0 after one inning, the Wiz scored four in the bottom of the ninth, sending the game to extra innings. Both teams went scoreless in the 10th and the 11th, and the game was called a draw.
The Wild Card series between the Dinos and the Lions is a best-of-three series. The fourth-place team has a one-game advantage; thus, the game scheduled for 14:00 (local time) on Tuesday, October 7, will be an elimination game to advance to the second round (or quarterfinals) of the postseason against the 2025 third-place finishers, SSG Landers. The Landers finished with a 75-65 record and four draws.
The quarterfinal best-of-five series is set to open on Thursday, October 9, at Incheon SSG Landers Field. The Landers will host games 1 and 2, as well as the eventual game 5. The Wild Card winner will host Game 3 on Sunday, October 12, and, if necessary, Game 4.
The quarterfinal winner will play in a semifinal against this year's second-place finishers, the Hanwha Eagles. The Eagles had an 83-57 record and four draws.
The best-of-five series will open on Friday, October 17, at Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark. The Eagles will also host Games 2 and (eventually) 5. The semifinal winner will host Games 3 and (eventually) 4 on October 20.
The regular season winners, the LG Twins, advanced directly to the Korean Series, which will open on Saturday, October 25, at Jamsil Baseball Stadium. The Eagles will also host Games 2 and 6 (eventually scheduled for November 1) and 7 (November 2). The semifinal winner will host Games 3, 4 (October 29), and the eventual Game 5.
The 2025 season has been a highly successful one for the KBO League. After setting its single-season record with 10,887,705 fans in 2024, the league surpassed the 10 million mark again when the total amount of paying spectators reached 10,088,590 on Saturday, August 23, and set a new single-season record with 12,312,519 paying spectators at the end of the regular season, resulting in an average attendance of 17,101 spectators per game.
WBSC Premier12 star Cody Ponce (Hanwha Eagles) won the pitching Triple Crown, leading the league in wins (17), earned run average (1.89) and strikeouts (252, the new KBO single-season record).
According to the Yonhap News Agency, Ponce and the Samsung Lions first baseman Lewin Diaz are the top candidates for the 2025 MVP Award.
Diaz, 28, is a Dominican star who played 112 Major League Baseball (MLB) games for the Miami Marlins and over 700 Minor League Baseball (MiLB) games, including 274 at the Triple-A level. He also played for the Mexican Baseball League's Mexico City Diablos Rojos.