The defending Korean baseball champions LG Twins and the runners-up KT Wiz will go at it again this fall.

After battling in the Korean Series last November, the Twins and the Wiz will clash in the first round of this year’s Korea Baseball Organization postseason. The best-of-five series begins at 2 p.m. Saturday at Jamsil Baseball Stadium, the Twins’ home in Seoul.

As the No. 3 seed, the Twins earned a bye to this round and will have the home field advantage. The Wiz took a much longer route to get here.

First, they had to beat the SSG Landers 4-3 in the fifth-place tiebreaker game on Tuesday just to sneak into the postseason. Then in the wild card round against fourth-seed Doosan Bears, the Wiz won two straight games to become the first No. 5 seed to make it out of that phase. Behind excellent pitching by starters William Cuevas and Wes Benjamin, the Wiz held the Bears scoreless in two straight days, enjoying a 4-0 and then a 1-0 victory.

After playing three “win-or-go-home” games in three days, the Wiz will only have Friday off to take a breather before jumping right back into 파워볼 the postseason grind. The Twins, on the other hand, haven’t played since their regular-season finale last Saturday.

In the 2023 Korean Series, the Twins beat the Wiz in five games, but it was a close series for the first three games.

The Wiz took the opener 3-2. And they led the second game 4-3 through seven innings, before Park Dong-won delivered a go-ahead two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth for a 5-4 win.

More drama awaited them in Game 3. With the Twins trailing 7-5 with two outs in the top of the ninth, Oh Ji-hwan, the Korean Series MVP, hammered a three-run homer for an improbable 8-7 victory.

The Twins took the next two games handily to clinch their first Korean Series title since 1994.

Many players of the championship core are still with the Twins, and manager Youm Kyoung-youb said he is counting on them to deliver in big games once again.

“Our players gained so much confidence from winning the title last year and I expect them to perform to the best of their abilities in this series,” Youm said Thursday, immediately after the Wiz knocked out the Bears. “We will try to be the last team standing in the postseason and bring joy to our fans.”