KBO Season Heats Up Before All-Star Break

By Yoo Jee-ho

SEOUL, June 29 (Yonhap) -- Clubs in the middle of the standings in South Korean baseball will look for one final push before the annual All-Star break just around the corner.

This is the final full week of the first half of the 2026 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season. The All-Star break will begin July 10 and the season will resume six days later.

The Hanwha Eagles moved back into a tie for fifth place with the Doosan Bears after sweeping the SSG Landers in their weekend series. Both the Eagles and the Bears are right at .500 -- 37-37-2 (wins-losses-ties) for the former and 38-38-2 for the latter.

The Eagles have a tough week ahead, taking on third-place KT Wiz (43-32-1) for three games and then league-leading LG Twins (48-29-0) for three more.

The Bears get two teams near the bottom of the standings, with three games against eighth-place Lotte Giants (33-41-2) and three more against last-place Kiwoom Heroes (27-51-1).

The Wiz ceded second place to the Samsung Lions (44-30-2) after getting swept by them over the weekend. The Lions have won four in a row.

The Lions will try to keep the streak going as they have six games coming up against sub-.500 clubs -- three versus the NC Dinos (35-39-1) and three more against the Landers (30-45-2).

The Landers, who lost 13 straight games earlier this year, have fallen to ninth place. They have won just one of their past six series, as their once-promising season is spinning out of control.

The Twins, prior to facing the Eagles, will visit the Heroes.

The Twins are two wins from reaching the 50-win mark this year. Historically, teams that get to the 50-win milestone before anyone have gone on to finish first that season nearly 70 percent of the time.

The Heroes, meanwhile, are 4 1/2 games behind the Landers at the bottom, as they try to avoid becoming the first club in the current 10-team setup to rank last in four consecutive seasons.

The KBO is on the verge of surpassing 7 million fans this week in the fewest games ever.

In 384 games played through Sunday, the teams had drawn 6,953,564 fans, and the 7-million milestone will likely be reached Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

Last year, the league reached 7 million in attendance in 405 games.

The KBO has cleared every million mark in record-breaking fashion so far this year.