The Giants have reportedly signed KBO outfielder Jung Hoo Lee to a six-year, $113 million deal. There’s an opt-out after the fourth year. There’s also a posting fee just north of $19 million the Giants will send to Lee’s old team, the Kiwoom Heroes. It’s, in raw numbers, the biggest contract to a free-agent position player in Giants history, but even after you adjust for inflation, it’s still the biggest. Barry Bonds’ original deal in 1992 was worth $94.7 million in today’s dollars. Will Lee outhit Bonds and post a .610 on-base percentage when he’s 39 years old? Only time … will tell.

This is the paradox of free agency. The easiest way to miss out on free agents is to be scared of risk. Don’t like uncertainty? You’ll offer a three-year deal for a 30-year-old who eventually signs for seven years. If you do your best to be logical, you’ll have a bunch of minor-league free agents on pre-arbitration salaries, giving you 0.5 WAR for $800,000 and making you feel smart, while your team loses and loses and loses.

It was time to scream “Cannonball!” Lee, if he works out, is as good of a fit as the Giants could have possibly hoped for.

You have questions. We have mealy-mouthed, bet-hedging answers about Jung Hoo Lee to the Giants.

Will he hit in the majors?

No idea. But Lee has absolutely one of the most fascinating profiles I’ve ever, ever, ever seen from a hitter. This is not an exaggeration. I knew the basics when I wrote his free-agent profile, but I’ve dug in more since then, and it gets freaky.

There aren’t a ton of resources for batted-ball statistics for the KBO, at least for English-language readers, but during the 2020 season, there was KBO Wizard. The guy who put it together is now working for the Padres, one of the other teams supposedly hot on Lee, which says something. That 2020 season wasn’t an outlier for Lee, and he’s had similar seasons since.

When it comes to plate-discipline stats, it’s easier to trust small samples, so it’s OK to look at these numbers and say things like, “Huh” or “Well, I’ll be.” But some of my favorite numbers from the limited set:

• He saw 291 fastballs in this sample

• He missed four of them

• LOL

It’s a small sample, but that’s not something you can fake. He was 21 years old during that season. Other statistical nuggets include him having the lowest ground-ball rate in the KBO in this sample by almost 10 percent, which suggests a flyball hitter. That was his profile, although he wasn’t in the top 10 for flyball hitters. What might be even more relevant is that his line-drive percentage was also at the top of the KBO by a wide margin in this sample, while his soft-contact percentage was second from the top.

We’re talking about a snapshot of a single season. It’s about all we have. But instead of relying on these stats, let’s look at a video:

Pablo Sandoval would watch this and say, dude, what are you swinging at? But that’s the elevator pitch for Lee. Bat-to-ball skills that you can’t even fathom. And even though that video is of a hilarious hack, Lee isn’t a hacker. The walk rates are fine. The chase rates are fine. His swing rate on balls in the heart of the plate is great, but when they’re in the shadow or chase area of the plate, he’s laying off more than the average hitter.

Take all of this with a grain of salt the size of a VW Bug. Giants legend (one at-bat, one strikeout) Aaron Altherr played two full seasons in the KBO, and he hit 30-plus homers in each of them. It’s harder to project MLB numbers based on these stats than minor-league or NPB stats.

Still, these are outliers by a whole lot. Lee makes contact. Players like Altherr can thrive while striking out 27 percent of the time. Shaun Anderson can thrive while striking out 7.6 batters per nine innings. Lee’s KBO success came in a way that was very, very different from his peers.

No.

Is that prediction too cocksure? Maybe. He hit 23 homers in 2022, after all. He’s still just 25. Some of those doubles can turn into homers.

But we’re talking about a left-handed hitter at Oracle Park. And while I painted a rosy picture about Lee’s batted-ball stats, here comes that pointy-headed nerd Eno Sarris to ruin all of our fun.

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.

That doesn’t scream splash hits. It doesn’t even scream J.T. Snow-style tin-scrapers. He’ll run into a few home runs because of his bat-to-ball skills and because he’ll play half his games away from Oracle Park, but that’s not his game. Rod Carew hit exactly as many homers in his career as Drew Stubbs. He hit fewer than Nick Hundley, Xavier Nady and John Vander Wal, but he’s still an inner-circle Hall of Famer. This approach can work! If you’re screaming at me that the game has changed dramatically, let me present a sheet of binder paper with “Luis Arraez” scribbled on it 100 times, like something Jack Torrance would type at the Overlook Hotel.

OK, Arraez is an outlier. Carew is an anachronism and an outlier. That doesn’t mean Lee can’t have a lot of success in the modern game. He most certainly can.

It’s not going to come with a ton of power. Or a lot of power. I’m suspicious about the chances at a modicum of power. It’s almost refreshing for the Giants to get a left-handed hitter who isn’t supposed to hit for power. Just lace singles into the holes and gaps and run until you’re told to stop.

What kind of defender is Lee in center?

Only response I have to this is a joke from the late, great Mitch Hedberg.

Lee will either be awful or great, or he’ll be OK. The Giants have a history of plonking outfielders into center with sketchy results. They signed Dave Roberts to a three-year deal to play center, and after about one week, it was clear that Ryan Klesko might have more range and a better arm. Marquis Grissom came over from the Dodgers and, whoops, couldn’t play center anymore. Denard Span was woefully miscast into center field in such a big yard. Even Aaron Rowand, who had won a Gold Glove the season before coming over to the Giants, was merely fine in center during his tenure. It’s less weird than the Pat Burrell-Travis Ishikawa tales from left field, but not by much.

You can’t fault the dude’s confidence, though.

If it seems like I’m being wishier-washier than normal here, that’s because I have no choice. I remember hearing Luis Matos was a future Gold Glove center fielder. He won the Defensive Player of the Year for the Arizona Fall League, which is generally crawling with top prospects and athletic wunderkinds. His defensive ability was supposed to be a done deal, a closed debate. But when he got to the majors, he had weird routes, indecisive breaks, poor closing speed and unfortunate mental lapses. He’s still just 22, but what was promised wasn’t what was delivered, at least not yet. And that’s with a guy who had a lot of eyeballs on him over here. He wasn’t supposed to be an enigma.

Just hope that the spectrum is something like Austin Slater to Andres Torres in 2010, and not post-injury Ángel Pagán to Austin Slater.

Does this, ahem, move the needle?

As in, does this convince Giants fans on the fence to buy season tickets?

But it’s not a bad start to the organization’s attempts to rebuild the goodwill that disappeared after two dull, dull seasons. Think of Lee more like a top prospect like Jackson Chourio, who was just signed to a long-term contract by the Brewers, even though he was 19 last season and had a .336 OBP in Double A. That deal could help the Brewers become a fearsome and perennial contender. It could also be the Scott Kingery deal, but four times worse. Don’t know if it’ll sell season tickets until it does.

Lee is less of a win-now acquisition than a top-dollar way to buy a prospect who is ready for the majors at this very second. Which means he could also be a win-now acquisition, but there’s a level of patience that should come with the deal. A 2024 All-Star? Seems aggressive. A player you’re thrilled that the Giants have in 2026? Seems reasonable, and there is some wiggle room for both scenarios.

What does a $130 million player look like these days?

Keith Law wrote about the Lee signing, and all of it is good, but this part really stuck out:

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.

That’s a big part of this. Average-or-slightly-better players get $20 million now. Complain about it, and you sound like someone complaining about how two bits could get you a bottle of Coke back in the day. It’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. This is the price of business now. There was talk about Michael Conforto opting out of his contract, even though he had a season that was the equivalent of taking a bite of an uncooked potato. That’s because teams can use Conforto as is, while also gambling on his still-present upside.

If you buy $/WAR — and every team has its own version — Lee’s average annual value for this contract would have put him with Brandon Drury, J.D. Davis and LaMonte Wade Jr. last season. It’s not the highest bar to clear.

It’s weird and complicated, just like you prefer. Let’s look at current outfielders on the Giants’ 40-man roster who are absolutely not going to start the season in the minors. This assumes that Lee’s deal goes through (he had ankle surgery last season, but I’m sure that’s fine, this stuff is just routine).

• Jung Hoo Lee
• Mike Yastrzemski
• Austin Slater
• Mitch Haniger
• Michael Conforto

But wait, there’s more. You have the outfielders on the 40-man roster with options:

• Tyler Fitzgerald
• Luis Matos
• Wade Meckler
• Heliot Ramos
• Blake Sabol
• Brett Wisely

The quintet at the top wouldn’t be a bad one at all. And if you’re worried about stunting the progress of the younger outfielders, read those first names again and start thinking about how many IL trips they combined for. It’s not a bad depth chart at all, even if it’s comparatively thin at the top.

One more outfielder will force a trade, though. Keep that in mind if Randy Arozarena or Cody Bellinger rumors keep popping up.

It’s a chunk of money (sketchy) to a 25-year-old player (cool) who perfectly fits the platonic ideal of what the Giants are looking for (super cool) but has a wide range of expected outcomes (is it April yet?).

I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced a contact-first player like this, though. Pablo Sandoval primed you, but this might be different. Lee might be the player the Giants have been waiting for all along, or he might be a Rowand-like misstep. Only way to figure it out is to play several hundred games over the next half-decade. Personally, I can’t wait.