Well, the Braves have a moderately expensive, not-quite-iridescent new toy, now: Ha-Seong Kim. He’ll probably exercise his player option and thus become the de facto starting shortstop for Atlanta for 2026, at least for the earlier part of the year.
As for what expectations for Kim should be — it’s a bit hard to nail down. Not only did he have shoulder surgery in the offseason, but after returning to big league action on August 1, he then went down with lower back inflammation. As a result, we have basically
90 PAs of action for Kim in 2025, and nothing else.
Those 90 PAs have not been inspiring: a 72 wRC+ and a .289 xwOBA. He’s also not played particularly well at short, but it’s a tiny sample so there’s not much point in even taking it into serious account. One thing I’ll note is that looking at his actual lines, his issues at the plate appear rust-related rather than oomph-related. While Kim has always been a slappy guy who isn’t trying to murder the ball, his swing speed, such as it is, is actually somewhat faster than it has been pre-injury, and his xwOBACON and such are comparable. The bigger issues are swing decisions, especially a clearly-small-sample-and-will-resolve-itself meatball swing rate of about 40 percent, compared to his career two-in-three rate (league average is three-in-four).
But, there are still question marks about defense, how he’ll integrate into an Atlanta attack that doesn’t seem to know what it is at this point, and well, pretty much every question that rears up when a guy misses four months and then comes back and then hits the shelf with a different injury anyway.
I think something in the 2.0-2.5 fWAR range makes sense as a central estimate that downscales his past production by the chance that he is simply and broadly ineffective or nonexistent going forward. What do you expect?
