KBO Predictions – Thursday, August 27, 2020 (Round 99)

The runs keep coming in the KBO and we had another wild day with high scorelines on Wednesday. The teams will return on Thursday for more action, but they will face new opponents in the next series of the South Korean baseball league.

I share my expectations for every fixture scheduled for August 27 in my KBO predictions post. You won’t find any odds here because the lines of the leading baseball betting sites are yet to be released at the time I’m writing this piece.

They could be up when you’re reading, so make sure to take a look at the best KBO betting sites.

And here’s every game that’s part of my KBO predictions for Thursday.

I have my doubts about this one and it might be close, but I believe that the KIA Tigers can open the series with a win over the Wyverns. They just had two strong showings against the Doosan Bears and their offense has been productive recently.

They also have a slight pitching advantage based on the expected starting pitchers and SK has been very inconsistent. The team has won several games recently, but there were plenty of blowouts, mostly because the Wyverns allow way too many runs.

The Tigers certainly have the players to punish them and that’s exactly what I expect to see in game one of this clash.

Both teams have been solid in the past two weeks or so and have a positive balance in their last 10 KBO games. You would normally struggle to find a winner under such circumstances, but there is a huge difference in the stats of the starting pitchers.

KT Wiz is expected to send one of its worst starters this season and that’s bad news against the rejuvenated offense of the Twins. LG’s choice looks much better on paper and that should give the team the edge in the opener.

This is by far the toughest of my KBO predictions for Thursday for multiple reasons. Both teams are strong and have traded blows in the previous meetings this season. On top of that, they have been shaky on the defensive end recently.

If you add the fact that both starting pitchers haven’t played much in 2020, it looks really hard to pick the winner here. And yet, I prefer to trust the Bears for one simple reason. They lost their previous game and you would rarely see back-to-back defeats for them this season.

One of the games that look fairly one-sided is the opener between the Lions and the Eagles. Samsung’s expected starting pitcher is much better and the team is stronger overall. Hanwha has been struggling in the pitching department all season long and has the worst offense in the league.

Despite scoring some runs recently, I simply can trust the Eagles. Samsung should be able to contain them for the most part and take advantage of their problems on the other end to win.

The Heroes are involved in a fight for the top spot in the KBO standings, but the Giants are chasing the last place in the playoffs right now. Both teams will be desperate to start the series with a win and I assume that Kiwoom will be the slight favorites of the betting sites.

And yet, the Heroes are expected to send a pitcher who was destroyed in his only two starts of the season. The Giants should be able to score plenty of runs and they have been rather prolific recently, so I’m backing Lotte here.