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SF Giants Becoming Favorites to Land All-Star Infielder Ha-Seong Kim

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The San Francisco Giants are emerging as a potential favorite to land free agent Ha-Seong Kim, keeping him in the NL West.

Ha-Seong Kim is still looking for his home in 2025. It may be that the All-Star doesn’t even need to leave his division to do so.

After his exceptional 2023 season, Kim’s platform year was far from what he’d hoped for. Injuries had a clear impact on his offense, his impressive .749 OPS in 2023 dropped to a below-league-average .700 in 2024. He ended up having surgery on his shoulder at the end of the season to help fix these issues, but this has affected his market. Particularly, now he won’t be ready for Opening Day, according to MLB Network’s Jon Morosi.

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Ha-Seong Kim is a Fit for the SF Giants

Despite this, Kim is still expected to have plenty of teams interested. None more so than the San Francisco Giants. Andrew Baggerly of The Athletic reported their interest at the start of the offseason, especially before the huge signing of Willy Adames. Despite playing all of 2024 at shortstop, one of Kim’s biggest strengths is his flexibility in the infield. A utility Gold Glove winner, Kim adds value defensively wherever he plays and has over 500 innings at third base, 1,000 at second, and 2,500 at shortstop. Not bad for a guy who was only posted in 2021.

This means the Giants’ interest wouldn’t have gone anywhere, especially with questions left in the infield. Their predicted second baseman is Tyler Fitzgerald, a rookie last year who was one of the few bright spots for the team. The 27-year-old had a ridiculous 136 OPS+ in his 96 games, but a .592 OPS across his last 36 games has put doubt in people’s minds about whether such results can be replicated. Either way, the Giants still lack any type of infield depth. Brett Wisely and Casey Schmitt are the best in-house options and neither have shown enough to prove they’re true major leaguers. This would mean Kim could still add a whole lot, even after recovering from a big shoulder surgery.

It is worth questioning whether Kim would be addressing the Giants’ need for offense. His output is limited, as even in his amazing 2023 season, he massively outperformed his expected stats. He has an incredible eye, proven by a 96th-percentile walk rate and 98th-percentile chase rate. However, he just doesn’t hit the ball hard enough. His 4.8% barrel rate in 2024 puts him in the bottom fifth of the league and was a career-high. In fact, he had career highs in exit velocity and hard hit % too. All of that produced just a .352 xSLG and a .107 xISO.

Other Potential Fits

A reunion with the San Diego Padres was predicted by Jim Bowden of The Athletic and would make a lot of sense for a player recovering from injury. Moreso, the Padres need his glove in the infield. Even in his injury-filled season, Kim still had 4 OAA at shortstop, a position he didn’t play once a year prior. The issue with the Padres remains their ownership dispute. How many players are willing to sign even a short-term contract with a team that has such an uncertain future?

The New York Yankees are a team in need of infield help and would benefit from the flexibility of Kim. They’re the most recent team to have reported interest in the Korean infielder, as reported by @MLBMarathon on X. The Yankees’ main weakness is at third base, which is perhaps the weakest of Kim’s positions. However, Jazz Chisholm Jr. was exceptional there in 2024 putting up 8 OAA in only 400 innings, and could easily play there to allow Kim to play second.

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Teams like the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays continue to search for infield help too. This all leads to Kim being one of the most sought-after free agents left on the market. The big question will be who is willing to roll the dice on his recovery to gain a potential All-Star.

 

Photo Credit: © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

The post SF Giants Becoming Favorites to Land All-Star Infielder Ha-Seong Kim appeared first on Last Word On Baseball.