Is Ha-Seong Kim a superstar?

With a cursory glance at the Baseball Reference WAR leaderboards for position players this season, you’ll notice something a bit peculiar. Ohtani, Acuña, Franco, Robert — that all sounds normal.

And then you arrive at Ha-Seong Kim’s name. Kim, a third-year infielder from South Korea on a team packed to the seams with superstars. Kim, who was signed by the Padres mostly as a defensive weapon. Kim, who is now slashing .254/.345/.407 with 10 home runs.

As of July 6, Kim is fifth among position players in baseball with 3.8 bWAR, tied with his teammate Fernando Tatís Jr. and leading Juan Soto by just a hair.

The Korean shortstop had a stellar season by all accounts last year, finding his way as an above-average hitter while maintaining his always-steady defense, cruising to 3.7 fWAR and 5 bWAR in 150 games.

But this year, he’s almost bested that pace already, even though he’s been tasked with moving positions. How has he done it?

A Quality Skillset

When Kim came over from Korea, a glaring weakness was expected. While the quality shortstop was supposed to be able to play any infield position, it was likely that he would struggle against velocity, as the jump from KBO to MLB is often challenging in that regard. That challenge proved true for Kim, who struggled to drive the fastball over a rookie season in which he didn’t produce much value at the plate, chasing pitches frequently and missing good ones to hit.

Over the next two seasons, though, Kim began to find his rhythm, starting to drive fastballs and punish breaking pitches while slowly working to keep his chase rates in check. The main difference between the hitter Kim was in 2021 and 2022 versus this season is his ability to chase less and blast fastballs.