WATCH: Kim Ha-Seong has been on fire past month, hits TWO home runs against the Pirates
Kim went 2-for-3 with two home runs, three RBI and a walk in Monday’s 8-4 loss to the Pirates.
Kim led off the bottom of the first inning with a solo shot, then added a two-run blast in the fifth. The infielder has racked up six multi-hit efforts in his last 12 contests, but none of them have come in consecutive games. He’s slashing .270/.363/.447 with 14 homers, 37 RBI, 53 runs scored and 18 stolen bases over 96 games this season.
Ha-Seong Kim did not think he would be here.
Not during the 2021 season, as he was trying to just put one at-bat in front of another.
“To be honest, of course not,” Kim said recently through interpreter Leo Bae. “Because, you know, my first year was like, I was just thinking every day about that day and just focusing on the day and then you think about tomorrow … because there’s so many things to adjust to. It was such a learning process for me. I was just busy just going through our day. It was really tough.”
Kim has gone from being a bench player barely batting .200 two years ago to arguably the Padres’ most valuable player so far this season. (That he is in such a conversation speaks to the lack of production from players the Padres expected to be better than they have been, but it does not diminish what Kim has done.)
With a boost from his having played perhaps the finest defense in the major leagues (mostly at second base but also at third and shortstop), Kim’s 3.1 fWAR is third behind Tatis’ 3.6 and Soto’s 3.3.
In 26 games between June 15 and Sunday, Kim led the team with a .330 batting average and ranked second in on-base percentage (.400) and slugging percentage (.557). His .957 OPS was tops on the team in that span.
While he was not in a place to fathom it his rookie season, when he batted .202 with a .622 OPS over 298 plate appearances, he has settled into being what the Padres expected when they signed him to a four-year, $28 million contract.
At the beginning of June he said he was back to being “Korean Kim minus the power.” He has hit eight home runs in his past 100 at-bats and already exceeded last year’s season total of 11 with 14 so far this season.
Much has been mentioned regarding Kim’s improvement against velocity. He is batting .282 (13-for-46) in at-bats ending on pitches thrown 95 mph or faster. That is after batting .148 in ‘21 and .229 in ‘22.
Perhaps the biggest growth, however, is in his patience and poise at the plate.
Always one of the Padres’ smartest and most disciplined hitters, his comfort facing the best pitching in the world has bolstered his confidence and enabled him to be even more aggressively selective.
Kim sees more pitches (4.41 per plate appearance) than any player in the majors. His 18.1 percent chase rate on pitches outside the zone ranks 11th in the major leagues. That rate with two strikes, when players are often forced to swing at more pitches, is 33.2, down from 39 percent in his first two seasons. His .228 batting average with two strikes leads the Padres and ranks 24th in MLB.
“I try to stay aggressive until two strikes and then after that, I try to be more (resolute), be solid in the at-bat,” Kim said. “And this is my third year going in so I think that the first two experience actually helped me be more disciplined at the plate after two strikes. … When I became pro, I wanted to draw more walks. I wanted to become the type of hitter (that) you don’t strikeout but draw more walks. So that was my goal as a hitter. Eventually, as I get more experience in Korea, I became sort of like that, and I try to do that same thing here too.”
Related Posts
About The Author
