KBO Playoffs 2026: Kim Do-yeong Stuck on 39 as KIA Chase Third
The KBO playoffs 2026 picture got a lot sharper over the weekend, and the Kim Do-yeong story got a lot crueller. As of Sunday night, September 6 (KST), he sits on 39 home runs, one short of a number no Korean hitter has reached since 2018, and the record he was really chasing slipped away by a single day.
Do the maths. Kim was born on October 2, 2003. Lee Seung-yuop hit his 40th of 1999 at 22 years, 11 months and 5 days, the youngest anyone has done it in this league. On Sunday against KT, Kim was 22 years, 11 months and 4 days old. He had four hits, all singles, plus an intentional walk, and scored three runs in an 8-3 win, per SBS, and none of the four left the park. Monday is the KBO's rest day. So when he next picks up a bat on Tuesday he'll be 22 years, 11 months and 6 days: one day past tying Lee, two past beating him.
Four singles. On the one day that needed a fly ball.
The 40 still matters, record or not
The age mark is gone, but 40 itself is a real line here. The last season a Korean-born hitter cleared it was 2018, when Kim Jae-hwan hit 44 for Doosan on the way to the MVP, and Park Byung-ho and Han Yu-seom got there too, per Newspim. Imports have done it since (Mel Rojas Jr. hit 47 for KT in 2020, Lewin Díaz 50 for Samsung last year); homegrown bats haven't. Kim's previous best was 38, in his 2024 MVP year, when he also became the youngest 30-30 player the league has had.
He was named August player of the month on Monday, which is the news peg for all of this, and the vote wasn't close where it counted. He took 277,640 of 495,144 fan votes against 38,551 for Doosan's Gwak Been, who won the media panel 14-10 and still finished second. For August he hit .321 with six homers, 16 runs and a .714 slugging percentage over 15 games, and the six homers is what I'd underline. That's a 40-homer pace on its own, and he's carrying 98 RBIs, two short of a 100 that would sit nicely next to the 40, per SBS's own write-up.
KIA manager Lee Beom-ho put the difficulty plainly after the 39th, back on August 26 against Lotte, telling Starnews: "It's not easy to hit five home runs in a month." Kim then did six. One more in KIA's remaining 24 games doesn't need luck, it needs a Tuesday.
Half a game is the whole postseason
The reason KIA fans should care about Sunday's sweep of KT more than about the homer is the table. After Sunday's games, per the KBO's official standings:
- Samsung 72-46-3, first, 23 games left
- KT 69-46-3, 1.5 games back, 26 left
- LG 68-53-1, 5.5 back, 22 left
- KIA 66-52-2, 6.0 back, 24 left
- Doosan 62-57-4, 10.5 back, 21 left
Five teams make the KBO postseason, and it's a step-ladder, so where you finish decides how many rounds you have to survive. First place goes straight to the Korean Series. Third goes into a best-of-five semi-playoff. Fourth has to host the wild card round against fifth first, and that round is a two-game affair where fourth starts 1-0, so fifth has to win both. Last October, per Wikipedia's 2025 season page, Samsung went through that exact gate against NC, then won a semi-playoff before losing to Hanwha in the playoff.
Which is why LG and KIA being separated by half a game, third against fourth, is the most consequential gap on the board. LG have just lost two straight; KIA have won three. If KIA finish third, then their October starts with a proper series. If they finish fourth, it starts with a game they can lose once, and a rotation that has already burned an arm before LG have taken the field. That's what half a game buys.
Up top, Samsung against KT for the bye is closer than 1.5 games looks, because KT have three games in hand and just got swept. Doosan, meanwhile, hold fifth by 4.5 games over NC, and NC have 28 games left to Doosan's 21, which is the one race I'd call open but not really.
Why the schedule from here is a mess
The regular season is due to finish on October 7, and 144 games each is the target. Rain and a record heat wave wiped out enough dates earlier in the year that, from Tuesday, teams play makeup games against different opponents in different cities almost every day, rather than the usual three-game series, per Yonhap's report in The Korea Times. If you're trying to follow one team, the fixture list this month reads like a delivery route.
I reckon that helps the chasers. KT with 26 to play and Samsung with 23 means KT control their own gap; NC with 28 have more chances than anyone to make up ground, even from 15 back. It punishes pitching staffs, though. KIA have 24 games to fit into the 30 days between Tuesday and October 7, and that's if nothing else gets washed out.
Watching from outside Korea, and the Jamsil footnote
If you're abroad, SOOP has carried KBO for free since 2024 under a three-season deal that runs through this one, postseason included, per Korea JoongAng Daily, and its KBO page was still up when I checked on September 7. Commentary is Korean; the same piece mentions chat translation. Korean evening starts land in the small hours in the Eastern US, 13 hours behind KST, and mid-morning in the UK, eight behind. A weekend day game in Korea is the one you can watch at a civilised hour on the US East Coast.
One more thing for the diary. LG and Doosan played their last regular-season series against each other as co-tenants of Jamsil last week, because the ground comes down after 2026, per that same Korea Times piece. It opened in 1982. If the season plays out with LG at home in October, the last playoff game in that building is on the table too.
Kim gets his first swing at 40 on Tuesday. If it comes in the first week, then the 100 RBIs follow inside the month and the Tigers have their argument for third; if it drags into late September, the story turns into whether one number is costing them a seed. Either way, if you catch the swing before I do, tell me which pitch it was.
This is a running news series, not a one-off post — new stories go up twice a day, roughly 7am and 7pm Korea time.
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