“Nothing’s going right today.” KIA fail to clinch third after giving up grand slam ... Final showdown with LG on the 12th; lose and they’re off to the wild card!

[Financial News] The worst-case scenario—the one they most wanted to avoid—became reality. Despite deploying their trusted ace, the Tiger squad crumbled after giving up a painful grand slam and will now face the defending champion LG Twins in a brutal winner-take-all battle for third place.
The Kia Tigers fell 4-1 to the Lotte Giants in a regular-season home game at Gwangju-Kia Champions Field on the 11th, part of the 2026 Shinhan SOL KBO League. One more win would have secured third place on their own and earned them a direct ticket to the semi-playoffs, but they fell at the final hurdle.
KIA’s gamble on starting Oller, in a bid to avoid taking the race to a final game against LG, fell apart in the sixth. With the score locked at 0-0, Oller gave up consecutive hits to Víctor Reyes and Na Seung-yup with two outs in the top of the sixth, then walked Ko Seung-min to load the bases and put himself in a dire jam. Lotte cleanup hitter Han Dong-hee stepped up and crushed Oller’s third pitch, a 148-km/h two-seam fastball, sending a dagger of a grand slam soaring over the center-field wall.
As Oller took the loss after allowing four runs over 52⁄3 innings, KIA’s bats fell completely silent as well. Held in check by Lotte starter Kim Jin-wook, who pitched six scoreless innings and allowed three hits, KIA squandered key scoring chances in the first and fourth. In their final at-bat in the bottom of the ninth, consecutive hits by Harold Castro and Na Sung-bum put runners on first and third with no outs, but KIA managed just one run on an infield grounder and fell meekly.

Lotte, meanwhile, got a home run by Han Dong-hee against every team in the league—his 24th of the season—and Víctor Reyes notched his 207th hit of the season with a multi-hit game, moving two hits ahead of KT’s Choi Won-jun in the race for the most hits. With the win, Lotte completely erased the gap to seventh-place NC Dinos and moved within reach of ending the season on a high note.
All eyes in the KBO League now turn to Gwangju on the 12th. KIA (78 wins, 2 ties, 63 losses), which failed to win four straight, is just 0.5 games ahead of fourth-place LG (78 wins, 1 tie, 64 losses). The winner of the final game on the 12th will take third place and advance straight to the semi-playoffs. The loser will have to take a day off before beginning a punishing wild card decider against fifth-place Doosan Bears on the 14th. The do-or-die showdown, with their fall baseball fate on the line, is set to begin.
[email protected] Jeon Sang-il Reporter