Dein erstes Forum » majors against the pitch. -- ESPN Stats & Infor

South Korea owns League of Legends.Well, technically, North America does, as developer Riot Games was founded and based in Los Angeles, California, but lets be straightforward: the South Koreans are the true owners of the game. Of the last four Summoners Cup Finals -- the pinnacle of a years worth of games across the globe -- five of the eight finalists have been South Korean teams.This year, its the same story: if one of the three South Korean teams dont hoist the Summoners Cup at the finals come the end of October, its going to be a disappointment. Both finalists from last years event, SK Telecom T1 and ROX Tigers, are back to continue their intense rivalry, and Samsung Galaxy, the organization that won the 2014 World Championship, is back at Worlds after a lengthy two-year rebuild.Before the South Korean clubs begin their campaign to make it a four-peat, lets take a walk down memory lane.Season 1No team(s)Oh look, the only Summoners Cup without a South Korean team in the finals was the one where there were none competing in it. I am shocked and amazed the only tournament where a European team made it to the finish line is one neither South Korea nor China competed in.And even with those shortened odds, a North American team still didnt make the finals. Ouch.Season 2Azubu Frost: 2nd NaJin Sword: 5th-8thThe only year where South Korean teams participated but didnt win the Summoners Cup was also its first. After starting up its domestic league known at the time as OGN Champions (now simply LCK), the stage was set for the South Koreans to make their mark as a nation at the World Championships. After the meteoric success of StarCraft: Brood War in the late 90s and early 00s which began the competitive gaming boom in South Korea, League of Legends was seen as the successor.Azubu Frost was expected to make Worlds since the inception of professional League of Legends teams in South Korea, but its qualifying partner that year, NaJin Sword, was a surprise. Azubu Blaze, the winners of the first season of OGN Champions, was expected to make it to the international stage and possibly face its sister team in the Summoners Cup Finals. To the shock of fans, Blaze was upset in the Regional final by the over-aggressive, tower-diving club of NaJin Sword.At Worlds, NaJin was hit-and-miss. It breezed through the group stages, beating all three teams it was pitted up against. But the team wasnt able to make the semifinals after getting in the first round of the bracket stage versus the Taiwanese upstarts, Taipei Assassins. Sword would be most fondly remembered for its captain Yoon MakNooN Ha-woon, whose lighthearted personality outside the game and devil-may-care inside it charmed the Los Angeles crowds.Frost accomplished what was expected of them in making the Summoners Cup Finals. One of the heavy favorites entering the tournament alongside the likes of Russias Moscow 5, a South Korean and European final appeared to be on the docket. Yet, as it did against Sword, the Assassins eliminated the Russians from the tournament, and set up a final between TPA and Frost.At the University of Southern Californias Galen Center, TPA would make it a hat trick by beating Frost in a trio of upsets. Frost was powered by the top lane prowess of Park Shy Sang-myeon and intellect of support Hong MadLife Min-gi throughout the competition, yet were no match for the combined power of TPAs stalwart top laner Wang Stanley June Tsan and ace, Kurtis Toyz Lau.South Korea would leave the World Championships for the first (and last) time without the Summoners Cup.Season 3SK Telecom T1: Champions NaJin Black Sword: 3rd-4th Samsung Ozone: 9thThe 2013 World Championships was a weird one for South Korea.While everyone will remember the emergence of Lee Faker Sang-hyeok as the unkillable demon rookie who took the world by storm, the other South Korean teams are often lost in the shuffle.NaJin Black Sword, like the year prior, was a total wild card walking into the tournament. It won the first season of Champions after the 2012 season, but its results continued to slide as the split progressed. By the time the 2013 Worlds took place, Black Sword was considered somewhat of a fluke due to farming circuit points in the first half of the year before slumping for a majority of the summer.Samsung Ozone, like Sword, were a team that won the earlier split in the year and got in through circuit points, albeit the fact it was a much sturdier team than its counterpart. Ozone, however, would become the only South Korean team to never make it out of the group stages when it lost to Gambit Gaming in a tiebreaker. A lot of the blame for Samsungs disconnection at Worlds pointed towards the teams sale from the MVP organization to Samsung. The team also attempted to upgrade its top lane by starting an untested rookie in the group stages, Jang Looper Hyeong-seok, and moving its former starter, Yoon Homme Sung-young, to coaching status. Looper performed well in his debut; his Singed play was the highlight of the tournament for Ozone, but the rest of the team around him faltered.Black Sword did much better than it was expected to. NaJin eliminated Gambit in the quarterfinals to exact a bit of revenge for Samsung, and then it went toe-to-toe with SK Telecom T1 in the semifinals. Rookie mid laner Kim Nagne Sang-moon starred on Gragas for the first half of the series, putting Black Sword a single win away from the finals; however, after T1 was able to get a feel for the matchup, it banned out the Gragas, and Nagne became ineffective in the final two games that let the tournament favorites of T1 make it to the Summoners Cup Final.SKT T1, before beating NaJin, had an eventful group stage where it only dropped a single game to Chinas OMG. The mid matchup between South Koreas MVP Faker and Chinas MVP Yu Cool Jia-Jun was seen as the storyline of the tournament, and a final between the two teams seemed to be a fitting finale after going 1-1 in the group stages. Alas, OMG got upset by fellow Chinese team Royal Club in the quarterfinals, and it would eventually be an SK Telecom T1 vs. Royal Club Summoners Cup Final.Royal Club was led by the AD carry of the tournament, Jian Uzi Zi-Hao, a young prodigy like Faker who was heralded for his raw individual skill. In the finals, though, it was no contest: SK Telecom T1 dismantled Royal in an anticlimactic sweep, and Faker ascended to the throne as the worlds best player with his teammates beside him.Season 4Samsung White: Champions Samsung Blue: 3rd-4th NaJin White Shield: 5th-8thIt was Azubu Blaze in 2012, KT Bullets in 2013 and SK Telecom T1 in 2014. Similar to NaJin Black Sword the year prior, SK Telecom T1 dominated at the start of the year but began to falter before ultimately succumbing to elimination in the South Korean Regionals.The expected Summoners Cup Final was an all-Samsung affair between Samsung Blue and Samsung White. Although White were never able to defeat its sister team, it was still seen as the bigger threat. Formerly known as Ozone, the team came into Worlds with the mindset of making up for 2013s embarrassment, and it did just that with its boa constrictor style of play, choking out opposing teams with not only stronger lanes but superior vision and map control. Blue, the opposite of White, was an average laning team but more than made up for its early game faults by being the best teamfighting club in the world come late game.NaJin White Shield, the oddball of the South Korean trio, was the unlikely winner of the Korean Regionals. The team, which only made a single domestic final the entire year (and lost to Blue) got its act together for the king-of-the-hill format of the Regionals and upended the reigning Korean champion KT Rolster Arrows and defending world champion SKT T1 to make it into the field of 16.White was the master of vision and bending opponents to its will. Blue was the master of teamfighting. NaJin White Shield ... were the eccentric cousin, who specialized in being unpredictable and even sometimes rotating their mid lane and top lane depending on the matchups.White Shield failed at Worlds. It got through the group stages, but was shellacked by OMG in the quarterfinals. Blue and White, on the other hand, went according to plan, and won their respective groups. In the quarterfinals, the Samsung family played against the North American duo of Cloud9 and Team SoloMid, and the result in both matches were the same: Samsung winning 3-1. Unfortunately, bracket luck wasnt on Blues side, and it ended up facing White in the semifinals.White finally got the upperhand and made it to the finals without dropping a single map to the teamfighting fanatics. Before Blue could even get to the point where its teamfighting edge would come into play, White would delete them from the map with amazing coordination in the laning phase.In the finals, for the second year in a row, Royal was waiting. While Uzi was able to gain a point on the scoreboard, taking a single game from White, it wasnt enough to make much of a difference. White won the Summoners Cup in commanding fashion.Season 5SK Telecom T1: Champions KOO Tigers: 2nd KT Rolster: 5th-8thOf course, the one year everyone slept on South Korea was the year it had by far its most successful trip to Worlds.Post 2014, many of South Koreas top stars -- the lineups of Samsung White and Blue -- left the domestic league to play in China for bigger contracts. This left the Mecca of esports in a state of limbo. SK Telecom T1 was the last bastion of hope.Faker wasnt enough to prevail against Chinas superpowered forces at the Mid-Season Invitational, losing to Edward Gaming in the finals. At Worlds, SKT T1 was still looked upon as a favorite, but EDG, along with reigning Chinese champion LGD, were seen as equal or even greater threats.At Worlds, all three South Korean teams made it out of the group stages with only the ROX Tigers missing a first-place seed into the bracket stage. The Flash Wolves of Taiwan would be the only team at the 2015 World Championships that could boast they had a winning record against a South Korean team, beating the Tigers in both group stage matchups. KT Rolster would fall to the Tigers in the quarterfinals, and SKT T1 would make quick work of the other Taiwanese squad, Ahq, in the first round of the bracket stage.The semifinals played out like regional warfare: South Korea vs. Europe. SKT T1 took care of business against Origen, and the Tigers took out Europes undefeated regular-season champion Fnatic on the other side of the bracket. That set up the first ever all-Korean Summoners Cup Final.China, who spent millions in the offseason, failed to win when it mattered the most, and none of its three representatives made it past the first round of the bracket stage.In the finals, it was -- hopefully, it changes at this years World Championship -- another flat ending. SKT T1 picked up two quick victories before Tigers captain Lee Hojin Ho-jin took a heroic, career-best game in the third set. And right when the crowd started standing firmly behind the underdog Tigers, the series ended with Faker using his signature Ryze to rip through KOOs feeble defenses. Cheap Swingman Nets Jerseys . Rob Manfred, baseballs chief operating officer, testified last week during the grievance filed by the players union to overturn Rodriguezs 211-game suspension. 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Goals from Jerome Boateng, Franck Ribery and Thomas Mueller extended Bayerns unbeaten run to a record 37 matches. "This record is incredible," Bayern coach Pep Guardiola said. Cheap Brooklyn Nets Jerseys ., and Rudi Swiegers of Kipling, Sask., took sixth spot on Saturday in pairs at the NHK Trophy ISU Grand Prix figure skating competition. Go inside the numbers and matchups that will decide Monday nights game, and then vote for which team will win at the bottom of the page.What we learned in Game 2Josh Tomlin was very good, Andrew Miller struck out five of the six batters he faced, and Cody Allen threw a 1-2-3 ninth as the Indians beat the Blue Jays 2-1, taking the first two games. Indians pitchers have 25 strikeouts in the first two games.?-- David SchoenfieldInside the pitching matchupWhen?Marcus Stroman?is on the mound:?Stroman started the wild-card game against the Orioles, giving up two runs in six innings with six strikeouts and no walks, but didnt start in the division series sweep of the Rangers. Stroman is fun to watch, a short righty with a six-pitch repertoire. He has gone to his sinker and cutter more this year, throwing those pitches more than 50 percent of the time, while mixing in his fastball, curve, slider and changeup. His game is all about keeping the ball down and getting grounders -- he had the highest ground ball rate of any qualified starter in the majors. He has been very good his past 14 starts, posting a 3.23 ERA and giving up eight home runs in 89? innings.Against the Orioles, Stroman threw 44 percent cutters and 32 percent sinkers, not throwing a single four-seam fastball. He had a similar game plan against the Indians back in August, throwing just one fastball against them in 100 pitches. During the season he threw his fastball 22 percent of the time, but hes at his best when the sinker is working or the cutter gets in on lefties. --?SchoenfieldWhen?Trevor Bauer?is on the mound:?Bauer was scheduled to start Game 2 before cutting his right pinkie finger fixing his drone, requiring stitches and forcing the Indians to push him back to this game. Yes, this never happened to Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson. As Buster Olney wrote the other day, aside from how Bauer will be able to pitch with the stitches, another issue that could potentially pop up is if the stitches start bleeding and blood gets on the ball and whether the umpires will view that as a foreign substance.The good news for the Indians is that Bauer wont need to go deep into the game. Outside of Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, the bullpen has barely been used, with Bryan Shaw pitching 2 2/3 innings and Dan Otero one inning. Well almost certainly see Otero, who had a 1.53 ERA, and perhaps Zach McAllister and Jeff Manship.As for Bauer, he had one hot streak through early July, but finished with a 4.26 ERA, including 6.39 in September. He went 4 2/3 innings in his playoff start against the Red Sox, finishing with six strikeouts and no walks but serving up two home runs on a night the ball was flying at Progressive Field -- as it often does. Bauer allowed 15 of his 20 home runs at home, although the ball also tends to fly out at Roogers Centre.ddddddddddddBauer works off a fastball that averages 93.2 mph, preferring to work middle-away to both lefties and righties. He works up in the zone with the fastball, which led to a .447 slugging percentage allowed on the pitch. You know Blue Jays hitters will be looking to feast off some of those high fastballs. He adds a curveball, cutter and changeup, with the curveball his go-to wipeout pitch -- batters hit .134/.145/.221 with a 45 percent strikeout rate against it.Player in the spotlightJose Bautista. Hes hitless in his past 14 at-bats after starting the postseason with home runs his first two games. He hit just .223 against fastballs this year so lets see if Bauer and the bullpen challenge him with hard stuff. -- SchoenfieldDid you know ...Bauer faced the Blue Jays twice in the regular season, holding Toronto to a .476 OPS against his fastball, his lowest OPS against any team that he faced multiple times. Just 3.2 percent of his fastballs were hard-hit by the Blue Jays, and they missed on 28 percent of those pitches, all his best marks. -- ESPN Stats & InformationWhat will decide Monday nights gameBauer getting the Blue Jays to chase breaking stuff. Bauer threw just 78 pitches in his only start this postseason, 27 of which (35 percent) were breaking balls. Bauer used his breaking ball on fewer than 20 percent of pitches during the regular season. Despite the small sample size in the postseason, batters chased 50 percent (8 of 16) of his breaking balls outside the strike zone. Will Bauer adjust his approach against the Blue Jays? Toronto swung at 26 percent of breaking balls outside the strike zone during the regular season, the lowest chase rate in the majors against the pitch. -- ESPN Stats & InformationChoosing sides: Who will win?? Torontos slug-happy lineup was a no-show during the two games in Cleveland, but the Blue Jays will be reinvigorated by a return to Rogers Centre. The Stroman-Bauer matchup is advantageous for Toronto, and the Jays offense will do enough to grind out a win and climb back in the series. -- Jerry CrasnickThe Blue Jays will finally start hitting Monday night. They always hit better at Rogers Centre and against the droned Bauer, it probably will continue to be that way. Toronto has too good of an offense to stay down for too much longer. I think they will get to Bauer and hand the Indians their first loss of the postseason. -- Andrew MarchandWhere the series standsOnly one team -- the 2004 Red Sox -- has rallied from a 3-0 series deficit, so this one certainly has a must-win feel to it for the Blue Jays, especially with Terry Francona threatening to bring Corey Kluber back in Game 4.?--?Schoenfield ' ' '