The Twins Are Playing Fall Baseball

While Kim Yi-seon enjoyed his last rest before the postseason, what had become of the Twins?

It was a complete circus.

Jeong Jin-haeng's resolve, however, did not waver. Call them fresh-out-of-high-school rookies if you liked — the fact remained that Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk had effectively served as his number one and two starters, and he ordered them both down to the minors for rest. He granted multi-game breaks to every core player who'd been logging innings without a breather.

Thanks to that, on the worst days the list of ten available starters didn't contain a single name from the old rotation — a bona fide disaster — but Manager Jeong Jin-haeng stood proud.

Grinding every starter into dust to defend third place here would only guarantee a lightning-fast 0-2 exit in the playoffs anyway. The right play was to restore the veterans' stamina and build the promising backups' first-team game sense until they were bodies you could actually use in October.

And so, armed with that self-justifying logic, he held the line to the very end. Besides, with Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk already in the minors, a call-up would take two weeks regardless — switching course now wasn't really an option.

Gripping his stomach, gritting his teeth, and pretending not to hear a single curse hurled his way — all while privately thanking the empty stadiums for one small mercy — Manager Jeong Jin-haeng endured. And then...

In the end, they had won.

Even the coaching staff — who'd been quietly questioning their manager's leadership as whispers spread through the clubhouse ('At this rate, if we miss the postseason, aren't we ALL getting fired?') — ultimately knelt before Jeong Jin-haeng, who had punched a playoff ticket while executing near-flawless player management.

Like some grand army making its entrance in a certain famous film, the sight of the manager striding in with his shoulders raised to the heavens was more than enough to leave a powerful impression on everyone present.

"Manager, about our contract renewal—"

"Contracts. Difficult."

"...I beg your pardon?"

"...The manager says we should postpone renewal talks until after the postseason. He insists that right now, the priority is focusing on winning."

"Ah... I see."

And so the Twins front office — which had always intended to keep him on so long as he posted respectable results — offered Jeong Jin-haeng a renewal, and was refused. Because in his mind, the current situation was not the finish line.

What mattered most in a short series, in his view?

Over the long grind of a full season, scrappy utility men, tactically astute players with sharp execution, dependable mid-tier depth — all of it counted. In a short series, none of it moved the needle.

Forget the small stuff. What mattered was aces, and only aces — an ace on the mound dominating games as the starter, and an ace at the plate able to crack a dead-even game open with one big swing. A two-sided airtight core.

The Twins admittedly lacked that kind of knockout bat. What they had instead was a pitching staff that went beyond sufficient and straight into criminal.

Kim Yi-seon. And Kang Min-hyuk.

Neither had quite reached the qualifying innings threshold (that, too, was Jeong Jin-haeng's careful management — a fact everyone conveniently forgets amid all the overuse outcry), but their numbers were utterly dominant.

Kim Yi-seon: 149 innings, a 1.93 ERA. Kang Min-hyuk: 154 innings, a 2.04 ERA.

Sub-2.00 versus low-2.00, the sharp differences in their underlying metrics, a dozen other variables — the argument over which of the two was the superior pitcher raged deafeningly. But at the end of the day, both of them were Twins pitchers.

Once you set those two aside, the next-best rotation arm in the entire KBO sat around the 2.60 mark. Say no more.

Two pitchers of that caliber, starting back to back. In a short series, the Twins' one-two ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠punch was an overwhelming weapon.

Director Jo Sang-shik — their personal physician and private pitching instructor — had warned that even for the postseason, a three-man rotation was pushing it. But run a four-man rotation, and a sequence of Kim Yi-seon – Kang Min-hyuk – X – X – Kim Yi-seon – Kang Min-hyuk was entirely possible.

Which meant: win every single game those two started, and a championship was within reach.

So why on earth would he sign a renewal now? He might be about to become the manager of the first club in KBO history to climb from rock bottom all the way to a title. His market value could be calculated after that.

Lost in that gleeful calculation, counting the days until his starters returned, Manager Jeong Jin-haeng was then informed:

"Yi-seon has the flu? Hold on — it's not COVID, is it?!"

"No, sir. Not COVID. They're calling it a bad cold, flu-like symptoms..."

"Thank God for that... Still, his fever climbed to 39 degrees? That's not dangerous?"

"The team owner and the team doctor have arranged to visit and check on his condition. He isn't staying at the club lodging at the moment, which makes monitoring difficult — but he lives near the minors' dormitory, so..."

"Why would the owner go in person... no, never mind. In any case — can he recover within three days?"

"Yes. It's only a cold, nothing serious — he'll recover. I'm just not certain what shape his conditioning will be in afterward."

At the news of Kim Yi-seon's illness, Jeong Jin-haeng felt the whole careful plan beginning to unravel.

No, Yi-seon. You're supposed to start the very first game when you come back...?

The 2020 KBO League — the season the pennant race standings were decided. Was the culprit the delayed season opener caused by COVID, or society's rigid paralysis?

The final standings had settled into an almost mirror image of the 2019 season.

The rise of the Seoul Twins and the Uiju Rangers — the two clubs that had scraped rock bottom for them the year before — was certainly dazzling. Beyond that, though, every other ranking had shifted by a step or two at most. Above all, the top two of each division held perfectly steady: the league's entire power structure had calcified.

For a league that had historically crowned a different champion nearly every year — to the point that, outside its founding era, almost no team ever earned the word "dynasty" — this was a strange development. Perhaps COVID really had been that fatal a disease.

One only had to listen to the discourse: small-market clubs had fallen behind in preparation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thanks to collapsing revenues and the struggle to secure training facilities that met quarantine standards. The compressed schedule meant roster depth was what separated winners from also-rans. And with empty stadiums plus the priority allocation of domed venues to keep the season running, home-field advantage had weakened — a blow that landed hardest on the weaker clubs.

Fans of the struggling teams wailed about why, of all seasons, they had to get hit by such absurd misfortune at exactly this moment. Others who had no shot at a title anyway sneered — 'A fake COVID season, a fake championship, not acknowledging it lolol' — gratuitously trashing everyone else's results, or consoled themselves with sour grapes: 'Fall baseball means nothing if you can't even attend in person.'

And the fans of the strong teams?

Paying no mind to the barking of the defeated, the Dragons' faithful were hard at work brewing fall baseball narratives of their own.

And the direction of those narratives was always the same: either flooding the gallery with 'we're absolute garbage and every other team terrifies me' disclaimers, or disguising themselves as fans of rival clubs and posting brimming confidence under false colors.

All of it stemmed from a jinx that pervaded not just baseball but sports at large: premature celebration is a jinxed death sentence.

The folk wisdom that a fanbase strutting around acting like the game is already won is begging for catastrophe. Run the actual numbers and it doesn't hold up — it's closer to a confirmation bias born of the human tendency to remember losses far more vividly than wins.

But sports is a world unusually devout in its superstitions, and even granting that early celebration had zero bearing on outcomes, the moment your team lost, every stray bit of swagger came back as a single karmic debt — and you'd get roasted over the coals without mercy. So everyone kept their heads down and said nothing reckless.

The same held true for the Twins fans, who were tasting fall baseball for the first time in ages.

Out loud, they earnestly insisted, 'We've given up.' 'Getting this far was already a success.' As if. They were baseball fans too. They understood perfectly well what carrying two once-in-a-generation starters meant in a short series.

What if...? The thought seized their minds: if things broke right, the Southern Series. Beyond that, the Korean Series. And though it bordered on delusion — a league championship itself was beginning to shimmer into view.

But it was, at best, a possibility, and with so many variables in play, they doubled down on refusing to tempt fate — diligently applying water and executing reverse jinxes. We're total trash, and we'll be annihilated the moment autumn arrives.

The vast majority of Twins fans clicked through without a second thought.

And from a post they'd opened with no thought at all, they felt despair — and went wailing through every corner of the community.

And the internet ghouls that were the Twins fans thought, in unison: This one really might be the end.