Deal details: Jung Hoo Lee signs with the San Francisco Giants for six-years, $113 million
I just wrote about how missing out on Shohei Ohtani meant the Giants whiffed on the best opportunity to address their team’s massive offensive deficiency, which is failing to get guys on base. Their team OBP of .312 was the second-worst in the National League last year, ahead only the Rockies (!). The main reason for the low OBP was that they just didn’t hit, as they were the league median team in total walks drawn. That in turn makes them the perfect team to sign Jung Hoo Lee, the KBO star who has never hit for an average below .318 in any of his seven seasons in Korea’s major league, even though he doesn’t project to hit for much power in MLB.
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Giants, Jung Hoo Lee agree to 6-year deal
Lee, who’ll play at age 25 next season, was one of the toughest hitters to strike out in the KBO in his time there. He walked more than he struck out in every one of his last five seasons in the KBO. His strikeout rate was among the five lowest in the entire league in each of those years as well, although he didn’t qualify in 2023 because he broke his ankle, ending his season after 86 games. This is his approach, favoring contact over power, although it looks like he offers grade 40 to 45 power rather than lacking enough power to square up MLB pitching.
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The Athletic’s 2023-24 MLB Top 40 Free Agent Big Board: Dodgers land Shohei Ohtani
There’s some risk here that he comes out of that approach and tries to muscle up to pull the ball out of the park, a change that would sacrifice quite a bit of batting average, and given Oracle Park’s spacious right field, he should stick with his typical approach of putting the ball in play and hope his new home ballpark gets him some extra doubles and triples over the course of the season. I do think the high contact rate will hold up, as his hand-eye coordination is elite and he’s certainly seen plenty of velocity, with the better quality of breaking stuff here the most likely challenge. He’s played center in Korea and I assume he’ll start out there for the Giants, who only have one true center fielder on their roster in Luis Matos (who should get some time in Triple A to get his bat back on track), but will probably be stretched there defensively and should end up in a corner by the midpoint of this contract.
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I’m fascinated at the low AAV for this deal, just $19.2 million, which prices him as an average regular at best. I’d be surprised if he fell short of that value, even with my skepticism over his lack of power — he might be an 8-12 homer a year guy — and the natural concerns about any left-handed hitter who’s shown a mild platoon split whether overseas or in the minors. I think he’s substantially more likely to be an average or better regular than Masataka Yoshida, whose contract costs the Red Sox $21 million per year (amortizing the posting fee over the five years of the deal) and who produced just 0.6 fWAR in his rookie season in MLB.
The Giants didn’t have a single outfielder produce 2 WAR of value in 2023, with Mike Yastrzemski leading the group at 1.8 fWAR in 106 games. Lee is a pretty immediate upgrade over whoever he replaces, although the magnitude depends on whose at-bats he ends up taking. Michael Conforto’s season was disappointing enough that he didn’t opt out of his contract, so he might be at risk if Mitch Haniger, who was below replacement level when he wasn’t on the injured list, can’t bounce back. Haniger and Austin Slater would appear to be the most likely candidates to lose playing time now, and a full season of Lee over those two guys would give the Giants a win to a win and a half, conservatively, of additional value.
That addresses one big problem for the Giants, although no one man alone (not even Ohtani) can fix their OBP issues or make them a league-average offense. There remain other areas the Giants need to address, even aside from the ongoing need to get more men on base. They still have no real shortstop on the roster — I do not believe prospect Marco Luciano can play shortstop at even an average level in the majors, and his bat is nowhere near ready — and the Giants could probably use another starting pitcher.
Trade details: Yankees acquire LHP Victor González and IF Jorbit Vivas for SS Trey Sweeney
The Dodgers, who I have to mention even in a column about the Giants it seems, swung a small trade earlier this week with the Yankees to clear 40-man roster space, trading left-handed reliever Victor González and infield prospect Jorbit Vivas to the Bronx for minor leaguer Trey Sweeney. This is more about the roster space than the return, as Sweeney, the Yankees’ first-round pick in 2021, probably won’t even crack the Dodgers’ top 20 prospects this winter; he’s a third baseman at best with below-average power and a strong distaste for breaking stuff. (Of course, the Dodgers will use their devil magic to get him to hit 27 homers this coming season.)
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Dodgers, Yankees make trade to clear roster spots for Ohtani, Kelly
González is a good get for the Yankees, a plus sinker/average slider guy who does well enough against righties to work full innings and should help neutralize left-handed hitters in the Yankees’ home park, which is very friendly to lefties with power. He threw a few more strikes in his major-league time in 2023 than he had previously, and if that holds up, he would give the Yankees the real left-on-left guy they lacked in their bullpen.
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Vivas is a high-contact hitter who can play second base pretty well and can handle third, but so far hasn’t shown the power to be able to profile as a regular at either spot. He can run a little and has probably gone from 35 power to 40, getting to 12 homers last year for Double-A Tulsa, enough that he could have a role as a utility infielder who can handle short in an emergency and fill in more often at second or third. He doesn’t have the luster of first-round status that Sweeney had, but he’s more likely to be worth something in the majors, and probably could contribute this year as a bench guy.
Deal details: The Royals sign RHP Seth Lugo to a three-year, $45 million contract, RHP Chris Stratton to a two-year, $8 million deal and LHP Will Smith on a one-year, $5 million deal
The Royals bolstered their pitching staff with a pair of moves on Tuesday, agreeing to sign starter Seth Lugo to a three-year, $45 million deal, and reliever Chris Stratton to a two-year, $8 million deal where the second year is a player option at $4.5 million. The Lugo deal might overprice him a little, but both guys make the Royals better immediately.
The Royals’ pitching was so bad last year, John Fisher tried to move them to Las Vegas, too. Kansas City allowed 5.30 runs per game in 2023, better only than the Hand-in-the-Till A’s, and in some ways it’s more appalling because the Royals had invested so heavily in pitching in the draft since their World Series win in 2015. Before signing Lugo, with the exception of 2023 breakout starter Cole Ragans, the Royals’ depth chart for 2024 didn’t have a potential starter who posted an ERA under 4.50 last year, and the lowest among them, Daniel Lynch, came back late in the year without his fastball.
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Royals, Lugo agree to 3-year, $45M deal
The Royals’ 2018 college pitching class has produced almost nothing, with Lynch and Brady Singer (5.52 ERA last year) the most notable names and Jackson Kowar now gone in trade, while 2020 first-rounder Asa Lacy has been beset by arm problems and poor control. Singer is the only pitcher the Royals have drafted in the last 10 years to generate at least 2.0 WAR as a Royal, and the only one to generate 3.0 WAR in the majors for anyone since Sean Manaea in 2013. These weren’t bad drafts, or at least not all of them — I was among those praising the 2018 draft class, and Lacy, who I saw a week before the world ended in 2020, looked like he could have gone 1-1 that year. The point is that the major-league team had to go outside the organization for even an average starter, and they landed one in Lugo, who gives them two such guys in their rotation along with Ragans.
Lugo’s a fastball/curveball guy with some of the highest spin rates ever seen on his breaker, but he works with a big assortment of pitches and doesn’t rely too much on any one pitch. He’s very deceptive, with the four-seamer and curveball looking similar out of his hand and then breaking in opposite directions as they approach the plate, and unlike a lot of starters on this market, he doesn’t have much mileage on his arm — last year’s 146 innings was by far his career high. I had him pegged for more like $10-12 million a year, but I don’t think $15 million is exorbitant, and he’s as big an upgrade for the Royals as he would have been for any team. If he can give them 150-160 innings, he might be a three-win improvement over whichever 5.50 ERA guy he’s replacing.
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Stratton also fits the Royals well because he’s shown he can handle some innings out of the bullpen, including multi-inning stints, and be a little above average at run prevention. Over the last three seasons, he’s been worth 1.6 rWAR/1.4 fWAR while throwing 225 1/3 innings with a 3.91 ERA and 3.55 FIP. Building on a theme here, the Royals didn’t end the season with a reliever on their roster who threw at least five innings in the majors last year and had an ERA under 4.40. Stratton gives them length, and some quality, too.
They also added left-handed reliever Will Smith on a one-year deal worth $5 million plus potential bonuses. Smith had an ERA of 4.40 exactly while pitching for Texas this year in what was his worst season since he bombed as a starter in 2012 … for the Kansas City Royals. The bullpen is already better than it was. I won’t pretend these moves make the Royals a contender, but they are already more competitive than they were a month ago.
(Top photo of Jung Hoo Lee at the 2020 Summer Olympics: Yukihito Taguchi / USA Today)
