**Jung Hoo Lee signs with the San Francisco Giants in a whopping $113 million deal**
Free-agent outfielder Jung Hoo Lee is signing with the San Francisco Giants, a league source confirmed Tuesday. MLB Network first reported the signing. Here’s what you need to know:
Lee, 25, was the 2022 MVP of South Korea’s KBO League, playing for the Kiwoom Heroes. His 2023 season was cut short due to a broken ankle, but he still slashed .318/.406/.455 with six home runs and 45 RBIs. Lee ranked No. 16 on The Athletic’s list of top MLB free agents.
What else to know about Lee
Over the past three seasons, Lee has posted an OPS about 32 percent better than the rest of the KBO — in line with what Jung Ho Kang had produced before he signed in the majors and better than what Ha-Seong Kim had done before coming stateside with the Padres. His 2022 season included 23 homers, though he has only one other season in double digits.
Lee will be subjected to a posting fee, paying 20 percent of the first $25 million, 17.5 percent of the next $25 million, and 15 percent of anything over $50 million.
For the sake of their fans and their own sanity, the Giants could not afford to keep finishing second when bidding for every free agent they coveted. And superagent Scott Boras is a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing a team in the throes of desperation.
So on the day San Francisco officially missed out on signing Shohei Ohtani, it shouldn’t have been surprising it moved quickly to wrap up a contract with the Korean star outfielder Tuesday. And it shouldn’t have been surprising the guaranteed money in the deal — $113 million over six years — far surpassed industry estimates.
The Giants’ full investment in Lee is nearer to $132.8 million when accounting for the posting fee of nearly $19 million payable to KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes, where Lee dazzled with his bat-to-ball skills while establishing himself as KBO’s premier player. Lee can also opt out of his contract with San Francisco after the fourth season.
Because the posting fee is derived as a percentage of guaranteed money in the contract, the Giants essentially absorbed a 15 percent penalty on salary they might never end up paying Lee if he opts out of the final two years of his contract. That’s how motivated San Francisco was to improve a roster that still needs major work to be able to compete in a loaded National League West.
The Giants took several scouting trips to Korea to evaluate Lee and even sent GM Pete Putila in October to witness what was essentially one cameo farewell plate appearance for Kiwoom. That plate appearance was the only one Lee logged after he fractured his ankle in July. By all accounts, he is fully healed and conducted agility drills for interested teams at Boras Corp. headquarters in Southern California in recent days.
But there is a reason Lee’s camp waited till last week to open his official 30-day posting window.
It should be mentioned that Lee’s deal is still pending a physical. That’s no small matter when you consider that last winter’s $365 million agreement with shortstop Carlos Correa was scuttled over issues with a decade-old ankle fracture that popped up on his physical exam.
As long as the agreement with Lee goes through, San Francisco will have an outfielder that forecasts to be an average defender in center field and might not hit more than 15 home runs. But his contact skills and ability to avoid strikeouts drew the Giants’ interest. — Andrew Baggarly, Giants senior writer
Lee is exactly what Giants have been searching for
San Francisco has needed to get younger and more athletic for a while. It’s been lacking a bat-to-ball hitter for a long time, with only two qualified .300 hitters over the last decade (Buster Posey). It’s been looking for a dedicated center fielder who could help their defense by allowing their outfielders to play in the corners, where they profile best.
Is Lee all of those things? Well, friend, that’s the $113 million question. It’s the $132.8 million question when you include the posting fee. The Giants certainly think he’s all those things, and if they’re right, it would have been hard to create a better player in laboratory conditions.
Keith Law had the 25-year-old Lee as his No. 10 free agent in his rankings, and most people agree that should be a major-league starter, but there are questions about his ability to be more than average defensively in center. The contract San Francisco gave Lee was more than twice as much as Tim Britton’s typically spot-on projection, though, so it would appear as if the market was robust.
Boras clients aren’t usually leaving money on the table, but this is a monocle-spinning contract compared to the expectations, even by Boras standards.
If Lee is as good as the Giants are hoping, he’ll be exactly what the franchise needs – a young, All-Star-caliber player who can get the fans excited again. After a couple years of random slow dudes hitting .240/.340/.410, here’s a player with the potential to do much more than that. He’ll be someone to put on billboards.
Maybe someone can give him an animal nickname and they can sell hats. Don’t be surprised if you look up in a month and people are calling him Otter or The Big Capybara for reasons you’ll never understand.
Or Lee could be relegated to a corner spot after a closer look at his defense and remind San Francisco fans of Denard Span’s two-year stint with the team. Not exactly bad at the plate, but not quite good, and completely out of place in center field.
They’re going to bet on the youth, though, and this wasn’t the offseason to hem and haw about risks. The Giants were an absurdly dull team in each of the last two seasons. Here’s one step – a big one – toward addressing that. — Grant Brisbee, Giants beat writer
Pros and cons of signing Lee
The bad news first. Trackman exit velocity stats for Lee were subpar in Korea, even when compared to his peers. In the KBO, Lee had a lower maximum exit velocity than Ha-Seong Kim, and only five qualified above-average regulars last year had less power than Kim in MLB. Lee also hit the ball hard (over 95 mph) less often than Kim.
The good news is he did so with elite plate skills — Lee struck out six percent of the time and walked 13 percent of the time in his last season in the KBO. Kim’s strikeout rate ported over pretty decently, too, so it’s possible Lee will strike out less than 10 percent of the time, which only one qualified bat last year did, and his name was Luis Arraez.
So if you take that contact ability and those power skills, you get a range of comparable type players. Arraez is a bit of a unicorn, but other names include Steven Kwan, Andrew Benintendi and Adam Frazier. One of the best comps comes from 2022, when Brendan Donovan hit most of the same marks as Lee.
Getting Donovan for center field in San Francisco may sound like a terrible deal for the Giants, but these comps are mostly above-average players in the big leagues, and that type of production is “worth” around $18 million a year according to the most recent research. You’ll also notice none of the comps are center fielders. If you were able to sign a Kwan that can play center field, you’d pay a pretty penny for that. — Eno Sarris, senior MLB writer