The skills would be a great addition to the Tigers. It remains to be seen if he might fit their budget and timetables.
Saturday afternoon, Padres shortstop Ha-Seong Kim declined his portion of the $8 million mutual option in his contract, making him part of the the free agency class for the 2024-25 offseason. I’ll cut right to the chase — the Tigers should be keeping a close eye on Kim’s market in the coming months. He’s a near-perfectfor what this team needs in terms of infield configuration, offensive talent, and organizational philosophy.
When Kim first came stateside in 2021, the then 25-year old was advertised as a physically gifted defensive star with first-rate smarts at the plate. He’d established himself as a productive player in his home country of Korea as a teenager and only got better and better. Spending the previous two seasons punishing opposing pitchers by drawing as many walks as strikeouts and hitting boatload of doubles, he tacked on a burst of power in 2019 and hit 30 home runs. Each of those two seasons, he was approximately 40 percent more productive than the KBO’s average hitter, according to wRC+.
The Padres came out in front when bidding on Kim ended, handing him a four year, $28 million contract that looks like a steal in retrospect. He initially had a little trouble gaining traction as an MLB player, but those speed bumps are long in the rearview mirror. His best season to date came in 2023, when he was worth 4.2 fWAR and hit for a 110 wRC+. The 2024 season saw his numbers take a small step in the wrong direction, but his 2.6 fWAR campaign with average offensive production is still a respectable mark.
The choice to decline his portion of the mutual option was an obvious one on Kim’s part. The once oft-cited going rate of $8M per WAR on the open market is an outdated figure at this point, meaning even last season’s downturn in fWAR far outpaces that rate. He’ll have earned the fat paycheck coming his way.
One factor complicating his next contract is a shoulder injury that Kim suffered at the end of the 2024 season. A torn labrum in his throwing shoulder necessitated surgery, one he may not be recovered from in time for Opening Day 2025. Because there will be no time for full workouts or showcases before the season starts, he may wind up on a pillow deal to prove he’s still the same player he was before his injury and gamble on making his big money next year.
What fuels Kim offensively is his ability to control the strike zone and utilize the whole field, which is exactly the identity Tigers boss Scott Harris has worked hard to cultivate in his young team. As one example of this fact, look at Kim’s swing decisions. FanGraphs tracks the percentage of swings at pitches outside the strike zone as O-Swing%, which is a good way to demonstrate just how talented Kim is at zone recognition.
As you can see, over the course of his career, Kim has been a paragon of patience at the plate compared to the rest of the league. He really hit his stride during that breakout 2023 campaign, and while the league average hitter swings at just under a third of pitches outside the zone, Kim does so less than a fifth of the time.
This aligns with the kind of players that Harris has placed in starting roles and sought in trades throughout his brief time with Detroit. Under his leadership, the team has transformed from one that offered at a staggering number of pitches outside the zone to one that demonstrated above-average discipline in 2024. Kim will only provide a boost to that overall lineup’s discipline, while further trimming the club’s overall swing and miss rate.
For instance, trading for Mark Canha to play a hybrid outfield/first baseman role last offseason fit with that ethos . Like Canha, Kim is a model of consistency and disciplined at-bats. While the Tigers’ lineup was substantially more potent than in years past, the group could go missing in action at times and would benefit from the stabilizing influence that Kim can offer.
On the other side of the coin, the patience manifests itself at times as passivity at the plate, and Kim also allows more strikes in the zone than the average hitter as well. That, coupled with his lack of big-time power output, are an anchor on his potential offensive production that will likely continue to hold him back to a degree. At 29 years old, he’s beyond the age of reforming himself as a player, and what he does already seems to work well.
“Kim might be a better hitter outside of Petco, a park that severely limits gap-to-gap doubles hitters like him,” noted FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens in his summary of the top 50 current free agents. That limitation would be removed in a world where Kim plays half his games at Comerica Park. Although it is known as a pitchers’ park, the spacious outfield at Comerica would be a welcoming home environment for Kim’s many hits intended for the outfield grass, particularly with the deep gaps to both sides of center field.
The final plus for Kim as a fit for the Tigers is his career 122 wRC+ against left-handed pitching. The organization knows full well that they need to balance out their lefty heavy lineup. Ideally that will come in the form of a true power hitter somewhere in the mix, but Kim’s defensive excellence and flexibility, combined with the ability to thrash southpaws, is a potent mix for a team with the Tigers present strengths and weaknesses.
Then there’s the elephant in the room — Javy Báez. The Tigers reinstated Báez from the 60-day injured list among their post-World Series roster maneuvering and, no matter how much fans might want him gone, he’s not in any immediate danger of being cut. If Kim were to sign on, he would understandably expect to be the starting shortstop considering his success as the primary starter at the position in San Diego.
Things are never that simple under AJ Hinch, though. Kim is capable of playing plus defense anywhere in the infield, and Hinch would almost certainly ask him to do so. Lineups including Báez at short with Kim at second or third base would not just be feasible, but likely. Báez’ performance in the early season while Kim is on the mend could go a long way to determining what kind of timeshare the two wind up playing in, or whether the team would rather roll with recently minted big leaguer Trey Sweeney as a more standard backup. They could use regular combinations of the three at shortstop and third base.
Of course that assumes that Báez can still play major league caliber baseball, which seems unlikely at best, and a complete pipedream at worst. Sweeney has little track record to suggest he’s going to do much better than the 81 wRC+ he posted in his short time in the major leagues. There’s a good chance he’s more the next Zach McKinstry than a starting shortstop solution on a good team. How the Tigers view their outlook has a lot to do with how they might view Kim as an acquisition target.
Still, in any situation, Kim is easily the best player among those three at the moment, and would be among the better position players on the Tigers’ roster as they attempt to dethrone the Guardians atop the AL Central. Shortstops who play plus defense and can hold their own at the plate are hard to come by, as Tigers fans are well aware. Kim solves that problem, both immediately and dependably while shoring up the Tigers mediocre infield group significantly.
Perhaps a team looks past Kim’s recent injury history and shells out the near nine-digit 4-5 year deal some project. In that case, the Tigers probably shouldn’t be competing for him. He doesn’t add enough power to the lineup to make a huge impact, and the Tigers need to be extremely careful about the deals they hand out.
However, there still seems like a good chance that Kim doesn’t get the kind of $75-100M deal that FanGraphs and other sites suggest as his ceiling. The recent track record may hold him to a “prove it” type short term deal. If the Tigers can add a bigger bat at one of the corner infield spots, and then pick up Kim on a short deal of one or two years? That might be ideal even if the Tigers have to pay a steep average annual salary to land him.
An elite defender anywhere in the infield who shores up the lineup against left-handers would be a fine addition to the infield, affording A.J. Hinch a lot more flexibility and depth to work with. It’s not quite the big-time, plug and play fit some will be hoping for this offseason, but if the free agent market leaves Kim in the cold, the Tigers should be very aggressive in pursuing him.