The NC Dinos are shaking up the league. They’ve swept the 1-2 teams head-to-head and have a winning percentage of nearly 9% this month. After being in the bottom half of the standings at the start of the season, they’ve now climbed to third place.
NC has won eight of its first nine games 메이저놀이터 of the month. Since losing to the Samsung Lions on April 6, they have won five straight. Their recent form is the best of the 10 clubs.
The Dinosaur Legion’s momentum has sent the usual suspects reeling. NC knocked off leader LG Twins on the last two days, dropping them to second place, and then took the other two games to hand them a heartbreaking sweep. Last weekend, they swept the current leaders, the SSG Landers. The gap between the second- and first-place teams in the league is now down to two games and 3.5 games, respectively.
If I had to pick one strength that has fueled NC’s run, it would be on the mound. The team’s 3.19 ERA is the best in the league, well ahead of second-place SSG (3.52). The pitching staff is solid, both starting and relieving.
The dominant starter, Eric Pedroia, is still a force to be reckoned with. After opening the season with a 1.74 ERA in 12 games, he was the first pitcher in the league to reach the 10-win plateau. He’s not as good as he was in April, when he was “untouchable” with a sub-zero ERA, but he’s still counting.
The original homegrown ace, Lee Jae-hak, is also helping out. After hitting the free agent market ahead of this season, he eventually signed a 2+1 year, 900 million won deal with the Wonso, joining the starting lineup on March 21 to fill a hole in the rotation. In the four games since then, he’s gone six innings or more in each of them, earning two wins with a 0.72 ERA.
The hitters can’t be ignored either. With a team batting average of 0.267, second only to LG (0.280), the NC bats are more evenly matched than relying on one or two star players. As of the 12th, only Son As-seob and Park Min-woo are hitting in the triple digits, but Seo Ho-cheol, Do Tae-hoon, Kwon Hee-dong, and others have solid batting averages in the low double digits.
The same goes for long balls. Kim Joo-won has the most home runs on the team with five, but a total of seven batters have hit at least three. As a result, the team ranks fourth in the league in home runs with 34.