Ha-Seong Kim returns to Atlanta on a one-year contract

Well, the Braves must have liked what they saw. After Atlanta claimed Hi Seong Kim after clearing waivers in September and seeing him decline his $16 million option for the 2026 season, the team is bringing him back on a one-year, $20 million contract. In a rare coup Jon Heyman reeled in the Braves by breaking the news before they could put some text on their trusty press release template and post a JPEG to social media. (Peter Labuza of Twins Daily noted the most important part of the deal: The press release failed to mention that Kim donated 1% of his salary to the Atlanta Braves Foundation.) The reunion isn’t necessarily surprising, as president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos expressed interest in bringing Kim back when he signed out. However, the deal represents a departure from Atlanta’s recent strategy and doesn’t match most estimates of what Kim would get in free agency.

This is the first time since they deigned the Braves to spend money on the shortstop position Dansby Swanson run in 2022. They rolled along Orlando Arcia in 2023, and he rewarded them with a 100 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR. When Arcia returned to career standards in 2023 with a 72 wRC+, the Braves were allowed just 0.7 WAR from the position, fifth-worst in the league. The punchless, slick fieldwork Nick Allen failed in 2025, prompting the team to claim Kim; on an annual basis, Atlanta’s 0.4 WAR was briefly third from the bottom. They recently traded Allen to Houston in exchange for a utility man Mauricio Dubonwhich has surprisingly good numbers, but isn’t really an everyday option. The Braves are clearly tired of having a gaping black hole in the short term, but you might not be prepared for how big this departure is. Swanson made just $10 million in his final year of arbitration, meaning the Braves are about to spend double the amount they’ve ever spent on a shortstop.

Entering the offseason, most estimates had Kim signing a deal like the one he signed with the Rays last year: two or three years with an opt-out for about $15 million per year. That made sense because he was still in a similar position. After a stellar seven-year KBO career, Kim struggled in his first campaign in the United States before establishing himself as a reliably above-average middle infielder for the Padres. From 2022 to 2024, he combined great defense with a 106 wRC+, averaging 3.7 WAR per 150 games. That’s a borderline All-Star at a premium position. In 2023, Kim won a Gold Glove and earned some MVP votes. He seemed ready for a payday and a long contract heading into free agency. Instead, he tore the labrum in his right shoulder and dived back to first base against the Rockies in August 2024.

The injury ended his season prematurely and led to that cushion deal with the Rays. The surgery, followed by hamstring and calf injuries, kept him out until July, and after back problems cost him two more IL stints, Kim found himself in Atlanta. He played just 48 games in 2025 and understandably didn’t quite look like himself. He clearly believed he could raise more than $16 million on the open market, even with a “protest-it” deal, and the move paid off. Although the deal is only for one year, Anthopoulos has remained direct about his desire to lock Kim down. reporters tell“Our goal is for him to have a great year and we will keep him for the long term.”

Kim is 30 years old and has had a losing season. The big question is whether we should expect him to look like he did between 2022 and 2024. The strongest indicator we should have is that the Braves saw him up close in the final month of the season. While both his offense and defense were below average in Atlanta, they clearly liked what they saw. The numbers can tell us something more.

As with any shoulder injury, the point is for a player to regain his strength. The good news is that Kim certainly looked strong enough at the plate. He matched his maximum exit velocity from 2023 and 2024, and his average exit velocity and 90th percentile were the highest of his career. We’re talking just 191 at-bats and 134 batted ball events, but it doesn’t take that many to prove you’re capable of hitting the ball as hard as you used to. Kim’s offensive numbers weren’t great, both because not all of that hard contact turned into slugs and because he posted his worst walk and strikeout numbers since 2021. Still, it’s hard to blame him for that in such a short, injury-marred season, especially since the underlying stats looked good. His pursuit rate was down, but it was certainly not outside of his career norms, and his zone contact rate was the best of his career. As I noted when the Braves claimed him, he also saw a spike in pitches at the edge of the strike zone, the kind of flukes that can wreak havoc on your numbers in a short period of time. Kim ran a wRC+ of just 82, but he had played 48 games with worse performances in all four of his previous MLB seasons. It happens.

The bigger question is how the surgery will affect Kim’s arm strength going forward. In 2024, he averaged 80 mph from the short, which ranked 12th out of 66 qualified shortstops. By 2025, that number had fallen to 133.9 km/h, a decrease of more than four ticks. Perhaps more importantly, Kim’s hardest throw was just 80 mph, nearly 5 mph below his best mark in 2024. However, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First off, that big drop is scary, but Kim still has an above-average arm for the position, ranking 22nd out of 65 qualified shortstops. Second, we’re not talking about a ton of opportunities here. Statcast had Kim with just 164 pitches from shortstop in 2025, less than half as many as in 2024. Most of the field opportunities are routine, meaning he just didn’t have as many reasons to unleash his hardest throws. In previous seasons, Kim always had a difference of at least 6 km/h between his average throw and his maximum. In 2024, the gap was closer to three ticks, an indication that he might not have released the ball with as much abandon as before. That’s understandable, but it may change as the operation becomes smaller in the rearview mirror.

Third, Kim’s arm didn’t hurt his performance, according to Statcast or Baseball prospectus’ Throwing runs. By both measures, Kim’s arm has posted a neutral run value every season of his career. He has always made his defensive impact with his range. That impact has been positive in every season through 2025, and it’s hard to knock him too much as he’s hitting just below average while recovering from surgery and dealing with hamstring, calf and back injuries.

So that’s where we are. Injuries completely derailed Kim’s 2025 season, but it was difficult to see clear reasons to lower his future performance, with the possible exception of his arm strength. Plus, he was the second-best shortstop (and, depending on your opinion Bo Bichette defensively the best WHERE shortstop) on the free agent market.

Yet none of this is guaranteed. The Braves only had about $2 million of Kim’s salary in 2025, but they’ll pay him 10 times that in 2026. Risks are lurking. We won’t know if Kim’s arm will return to full strength until we see it happen. He has just turned thirty and in 2025 sustains injuries to four different body parts. It’s not at all difficult to imagine at least one of them resurfacing. Should they cost him a significant amount of time or hinder his performance, that could really hurt the Braves and again Kim’s chances of getting a good, long-term deal. And while there’s every reason to believe his bat is back where it was, that previous position was always around league average. Even completely healthy years occur, and Kim doesn’t start that high. The Braves know all that better than anyone, and they’re still willing to bet $20 million that Kim is still the player he used to be.