AKS
Ha-Seong Kim, IF
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Scouting report
Ha-Seong Kim is an explosive, compact-bodied athlete with natural doubles power who frequently turns on pitches on the inner half and absolutely obliterates balls to his pull side. He took bigger hacks during the 2020 KBO season and hit more homers without impacting his contact rates, as he also had more walks than K's, a paltry 10% strikeout rate, and an overall line of .396/.397/.523. The ZiPS projections conducted by our own Dan Szymborski this winter loved Kim so much that, purely based on those forecasts, he was one of the top free agents available last offseason. But, of course, there was no way of knowing whether or not Kim would be able to make the leap from the quality of pitching he saw in the KBO to the ungodly stuff coming out of the hands of big league arms. The Padres made a four-year bet on him (with a fifth year mutual option) with the notion that he'd be a superutility man. His defensive hands and actions are sufficient for shortstop though not great, but he has the speed and athleticism to play anywhere and make a lot of high-effort plays. He saw time all over the infield and outfield during the spring but has only been 2B/SS/3B so far during the big league regular season. Kim has struggled to adjust to big league stuff early on; 88 mph heaters are still in syndication in Korea. Kim only saw 16 fastballs over 95 mph during his final year with Kiwoom, but had already seen 45 of them by the end of April in the big leagues. He has way more hit tool risk than is typical of a player this age because of the leap and because he's at risk of getting spotty at-bats in a bench role, but even if he ends up with a 40 bat he still has the pull pop to profile as an everyday middle infielder in a vacuum. (KBO)