The two Seoul-based rivals in Korean baseball are set for their final regular-season series this week at the historic stadium they share, while the battle for the top spot in the standings continues into the final full month of the campaign.

The LG Twins and the Doosan Bears will meet for a three-game set at Jamsil Baseball Stadium from Tuesday to Thursday. The two clubs are co-tenants of the stadium, which will be torn down after this year, with the Bears serving as the home team this week. Opened in 1982 as part of the original wave of Korean professional baseball, Jamsil has long served as the country's most prominent ballpark, and its scheduled demolition marks the end of an era for both franchises that have called it home since the league's inception.

This will also be the final week in which Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) teams play a pair of regularly scheduled three-game sets. Starting Sept. 8, teams will play makeup games — those that were rained out or canceled due to a record-breaking heat wave earlier this year — against different opponents in different cities almost every day.

Beyond the sentimentality of the occasion, the Twins-Bears series carries real postseason implications. Under the KBO's playoff structure, only the top five clubs qualify for the postseason, with the regular-season champion earning a direct berth in the Korean Series. The Twins sit in fourth place at 64-51-1 (wins-losses-ties), trailing the Kia Tigers (63-50-2) by a fraction in winning percentage. The Bears (61-52-4) are two games behind the Twins while holding the fifth and final postseason spot, and a sweep this week would lift them over their crosstown rival. The Twins lead the season series 7-4-1 so far.

The race for first place is also heating up, in a manner reminiscent of 2021. That year, the Samsung Lions and the KT Wiz finished the regular season with identical records and needed a one-game tiebreaker to decide first place and the bye to the Korean Series. The Wiz prevailed 1-0 and went on to capture the franchise's first championship.

The Lions (68-44-3) enter the new week clinging to first place by a half game over the Wiz (66-43-3). Riding a five-game winning streak, the Lions will host the Lotte Giants for three games in the southeastern city of Daegu before visiting Seoul to face the Twins for three more. The Wiz will play a three-game home series against the Hanwha Eagles in Suwon, just south of Seoul, before traveling south to take on the Tigers for three games in Gwangju. With the two contenders' paths diverging in strength of schedule over the season's final weeks, every series from here carries added weight in determining whether another tiebreaker — or a clean finish — decides the top seed.

A sizable gap remains between the top five and the bottom five in the standings. The NC Dinos (51-58-2), despite winning three straight, remain eight games behind the Bears — the same margin as last Monday. The Giants (50-61-2) and the Eagles (49-62-3), who had been in a virtual tie with the Dinos a week ago, have all but played their way out of contention after dropping four straight and six straight games, respectively.

It has been a particularly disappointing season for the Eagles, last year's Korean Series runners-up to the Twins. They have not been above .500 since they were 39-38-2 on July 3, and since July 4 they have posted the worst record in the KBO at 10-24-1.

The SSG Landers (48-65-5) and the Kiwoom Heroes (42-76-3) still occupy the last two spots in the standings. The Heroes, on a four-game losing streak, are destined for a fourth consecutive last-place finish. The Landers, however, have played better of late, posting the KBO's second-best record in August at 11-6-1.

Source: The Korea Times