Sources: Giants and OF Jung Hoo Lee signs a $113 million, six-year deal.
ESPN sources say that center fielder Jung Hoo Lee or the San Francisco Giants agreed to a six-year, $113 million deal on Tuesday.
This is the biggest deal for an Asian-born batter coming to Major League Baseball, and it’s a big deal for a Giants team that has had a lot of problems with free agents lately.
In the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), Lee has been a star for a long time and is treated like royalty. His father, Jong Beom Lee, was thought to be the best all-around player within the KBO in the 1990s.
Lee, who is known as “Grandson of the Wind” because his father was dubbed “Son of the ind,” has a promise worth more than the $90 million the Red Sox of Boston gave Masataka Yoshida last year. After the fourth season, he can choose not to sign the deal.
Lee had a strong bond with the San Diego Padres because his good friend Ha-Seong Kim plays infield for them.
It was thought that the Giants would not be able to get Shohei Ohtani, but after Ohtani signed to the Dodgers this week, they made their chase of Lee even stronger.
Major free agents like Aaron Judge turned down signing offers over the past two years, and Carlos Correa’s agreement on a 13-year deal with San Francisco was thrown out because of a failed physical.
Lee isn’t as good as Ohtani, Judge, or Correa, but the left-handed outfielder has hit over.300 each year in the KBO and has an all-time batting average of.340, with a high of.360 in 2021.
He played 86 games in 2023 before breaking his left ankle. He hit.318/.406/.455 with six home runs as well as 45 RBIs.
He made his start for the Nexen/Kiwoom Heroes in 2017 when he was 18. He hit.318 right out of high school and won the league’s rookie for the year award.
Lee had the best season of his career in 2022, when he won KBO MVP and hit.349/.421/.575 with 23 home runs, over two times the number of walks (66), and 32 strikeouts.
Lee can make great contact, which should help him make the jump to the big leagues. This is much lower than the average strikeout rate in the KBO (18.2%) and MLB (22.7%) in 2023.
Lee has only struck out 5.4% of the time when he hits from an open stance, which means he first steps forward using his front foot then stops as he starts his swing.
Some analysts think Lee is fast enough to play good center field if he can get better from his ankle injury, while others see him more as a right fielder, which throws more pressure on the bat.
This year, he didn’t have much power, but he did hit a lot of ground balls—about 60%, which was higher than any everyday MLB player except Tim Anderson.
The person told the AP about the secret deal on Tuesday, but they did not give their name. Lee is a South Korean MVP as well as the son of a past MVP. After four years and $72 million, he can get out of the deal and sign with another team.
The Giants haven’t been to the playoffs in two years after winning a franchise-record 107 matches and the NL West in 2021. Lee will instantly fill a huge need, most likely in center field.
The deal was made after the Giants failed to sign Shohei Ohtani, a two-way star who signed a record-setting $700 million, 10-year agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
He talked about the team’s talks in Ohtani and said that the club had made three offers, the last of which was very close to the deal the Dodgers made.
During a video call, Zaidi said, “The offer that was made was very similar, if not the same, to what he concluded to accept.”
Farhan Zaidi, president for baseball operations for the Giants, wouldn’t talk about the Lee deal on Tuesday because the deal wasn’t official yet.
“We made what would be considered the biggest offer in the history of the Major Leagues.” I think our team wasn’t the only one that did that. We wanted to show right away that we were serious and interested, though.