As announced and formally presented in the Friday press conference (seems prudent after last year to wait), Jung Hoo Lee has been signed to a six year deal for $113M with a player opt-out after four seasons. Per Andy Baggarly of The Athletic (subscription required):
Lee will receive a $5 million signing bonus and receive salaries of $7 million in 2024, $16 million in 2025, $22 million in 2026, $22 million in 2027, $20.5 million in 2028, and $20.5 million in 2029. He also has the right to opt out of his contract after the 2027 season.
They will also pay nearly $19M in Posting Fee to Lee's former team, the Kiwoom Heroes. Thus, they are paying out $132M for him, over the life of the contract. And the $19M does not get reduced if he should opt out after 2027.
There are a few other good article on Jung Hoo:
- Fangraphs: 2024 Top 50 MLB Free Agents
- Lee has been evaluated as a Top 100-quality prospect at FanGraphs since the 2020 KBO season. He is an incredibly skilled contact and defense-oriented outfielder with an important baseball lineage.
- Jung-Hoo’s career began in precocious fashion, as he was the first player in KBO history to go straight from high school to their top level of play; he won Rookie of the Year as an 18-year-old in 2017. Since arriving in the league, Lee has a career .340/.407/.491 line, has made elite rates of contact (roughly 5.5% K% and 11% BB% combined the last two seasons), and has had a couple of years in which he also hit for meaningful power.
- Lee’s carrying tool is his Jedi-esque bat control, which he uses to deflect pitches all over the strike zone to all fields. His swing is incredibly cool and fun to watch, as Lee’s open stance comes closed very early before he takes a huge stride back toward the pitcher and unwinds from the ground up... His hand-eye coordination and ability to manipulate the barrel is amazing, however.
- Hitters in Asian pro leagues tend to face premium velocity less often than upper-level domestic prospects and it creates a wide error bar in projecting whether or not their hit tools will translate. Using Synergy to isolate Lee’s performance against fastballs at or above the MLB average (93 mph and up) yields just 154 pitches combined throughout the last two seasons; he slashed .268/.348/.415 against them. Bump the bottom boundary up to 94 mph and he slashed .276/.300/.379 across 96 pitches.
- If Lee doesn’t end up hitting for power, his center field defense will help buoy his overall contribution to a team. He’s a plus runner with above-average range and ball skills, and a plus arm. ... The most likely forecast is somewhere in the middle, and here Lee projects as a table-setting center fielder without much pop, though whatever the case, teams should be prepared to make a multi-year project out of Lee so he has time to adjust in the same ways Ha-Seong Kim has.
- Fangraphs: International Professional Players
- Current Superstars includes Jung Hoo Lee
- Fangraphs: Giants Finally Make a Free Agent Splash with Jung Hoo Lee Signing
- Lee immediately becomes the best defensive center fielder in a crowded Giants outfield group that was toward the bottom of the league in production last year. He’s a plus runner with above-average range and ball skills, and a plus arm.
- The scouting and data-oriented projections for Lee are both quite strong, befitting a player who just signed a nine-figure deal. Here are Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for Lee:
- ZiPS Projection – Jung Hoo Lee
- Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
- 2024 .288 .346 .416 476 56 137 29 4 8 62 39 38 2 111 1 2.5
- 2025 .288 .348 .422 486 58 140 30 4 9 63 41 38 2 113 1 2.6
- 2026 .287 .348 .420 488 58 140 30 4 9 63 42 38 1 112 0 2.6
- 2027 .281 .343 .409 487 58 137 29 3 9 62 42 37 1 108 0 2.3
- 2028 .282 .345 .412 478 57 135 29 3 9 61 42 36 1 109 0 2.3
- 2029 .281 .344 .406 463 54 130 28 3 8 58 41 35 1 108 0 2.2
- Those are the numbers of an above-average everyday center fielder. With this level of production, per Dan, ZiPS would recommend $132 million for a straight-up six-year deal.
- ZiPS evaluates $113 million with an opt-out after four years as having the same value relative to projections as a six-year, $134 million contract.
- Readers should consider him a contact-only threat at the moment, but he has rare hitting talent, and it’s plausible that with added strength, a swing adjustment, or some other developmental intervention, the Giants could coax more power out of him over time. Here you can see what ZiPS thinks the high-end outcomes look like if that happens:
- 2024 ZiPS Projection Percentiles – Jung Hoo Lee
- Percentile 2B HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR
- 95% 44 14 .339 .396 .496 147 4.8
- 90% 40 12 .325 .386 .476 137 4.3
- 80% 36 11 .314 .373 .456 128 3.6
- 70% 33 10 .304 .364 .439 122 3.2
- 60% 31 9 .295 .356 .427 117 2.9
- 50% 29 8 .288 .346 .416 111 2.5
- 40% 27 7 .280 .339 .398 105 2.1
- 30% 26 7 .270 .330 .385 99 1.7
- 20% 24 6 .258 .323 .371 93 1.3
- 10% 21 5 .242 .305 .351 84 0.7
- 5% 19 4 .230 .291 .332 75 0.2
- It may take a little time for Lee to adjust to the quality of big league stuff, but his glove will play right away. His signing brings an element of youth and excitement to the team that the Giants have lacked for the last few seasons.