The 2023 postseason of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) league will start on Thursday, 19 October.
The fourth-place finishers of the regular season ND Dinos will host the fifth-place Doosan Bears for the Wild Card round, which will consist of one or two games.
If the Dinos win or tie the game, they will advance to the semi-playoff against the third-place and defending Korean Series champions.
The Bears would need two wins to advance. No fifth-place finisher has ever advanced since the supplementar round was introduced in 2015.
The Landers secured third place in a dramatic regular season finish, defeating the Bears, 5-0, in their last game and surpassing the Dinos, who dropped their final two regular season games.
After a 144-game regular season, the Landers finished with a 76-65 record and three ties. The Dinos had 75 wins, 67 losses and two ties. The Bears suffered 68 while winning 74 and tying two.
The semi-playoff (22-28 October) will be a best-of-five series. The winner will advance to the playoff series against the second-place finisher KT Wiz (79-62-3).
After another five-game series (30 October-5 November), the winner will face the regular season winners LG Twins (86-56-2) in the best-of-seven Korean Series.
The Korean Series will open on Tuesday, 7 November, Game four is scheduled for 11 November. Game seven would happen on Wednesday, 15 November.
Dinos right-hander Erick Fedde became the first foreigner to earn 20 wins in a KBO regular season. The 30-year-old right-hander had a league-leading 2.06 earned run average and 204 strikeouts, becoming the fourth pitcher to celebrate a Triple Crown. He was honoured with the Choi Dong-won award that goes to the best pitcher of the league since 2014.
Fedde has played from 2017 to 2022 for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball (MLB) appearing in 102 games, 88 as a starter.
Dong-won Choi (1958-2011) led Korea to their lone BasebalL World Cup title in 1982. In 1984 he led the Lotte Giants to a Korean Series title. He became the only pitcher to record four wins in the Korean Series. He still holds the single-season KBO strikeout record at 223.
Veteran outfielder Ah-Seop Son, who helped Korea win the inaugural WBSC Premier12 in 2015, won his first batting title at 35 years of age, becoming the oldest first-time batting champion. A lifetime .321 hitter through 2022, Son led the Dinos lineup with a .339 batting average in 2023.
Emerging star Si-hwan Roh, a 22-year old Hanwha Eagles third baseman, led the league both in home runs (31) and RBIs (101).
