Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- A high-priced shortstop signing has become Atlanta's biggest disappointment through the early season.
- The player battles both offensive futility and surprising defensive lapses after an unusual offseason injury.
- Coaches now face a tough decision about whether to stick with the struggling veteran or turn the position over to younger options.
The Atlanta Braves took an expensive gamble in the offseason, re-signing Ha-Seong Kim to a one-year, $20 million deal in hopes that he'd be the shortstop stabilizer they'd needed. That gamble certainly made sense for a player like Kim, who won a Gold Glove and received MVP votes in 2023 and had injuries to blame for his dip in production in 2024 and 2025. Unfortunately, it has gone horribly wrong.
Kim's season got off to a dismal start when, soon after signing with Atlanta, he slipped on ice while in South Korea and tore a tendon in his right middle finger, suffering one of the strangest and unluckiest injuries in recent memory. That ailment cost him the first six weeks of the 2026 campaign, and ever since he returned in mid-May, he's looked like a shell of himself — while fill-ins like Mauricio Dubon and Jorge Mateo have mostly impressed. Things have gone so poorly that Kim is no longer the every-day shortstop for Atlanta, stuck in a timeshare role at best. Here's what's gone wrong.
Ha-Seong Kim is mired in the worst offensive slump of his career
Kim has never been known for his bat. In fact, even in a 2023 season in which he got down-ballot MVP votes, he hit .260 with 17 home runs and a .749 OPS. He finished 14th in the MVP balloting that year largely because of his defense, which was beyond elite. But even while Kim has never been an elite hitter, he still entered this season with a career 97 OPS+, just a shade below league average. This season, by contrast, he has a -21 OPS+. No, that's not a typo.
Kim has gone 5-for-56 in 17 games. He does not have a single extra-base hit and is even striking out at a 22.6 percent clip, his worst mark since his rookie year in 2021. Braves fans are used to watching subpar hitters at shortstop after Nick Allen was their starter for much of 2025, but did Allen ever slump like this? It's really hard to get only five hits, all singles, in 56 at-bats.
What's especially frustrating about this is that, while it's going to get better (it can't get any worse), I don't know when or if Kim will truly get going this season based on his batted-ball data.
Ha-Seong KIm is hitting far too many ground balls
Kim is not a power hitter. Those 17 home runs he hit in 2023 were a career high, and he's never hit more than 11 long balls in any other year. With that being said, though, Kim still had a knack for getting the ball in the air on the pull side, even if he didn't hit many over the fence. That has not been the case this season: He is hitting the ball on the ground more than he ever has before, while pulling the ball in the air less.
Kim in 2026 | Kim in his career | MLB average | |
|---|---|---|---|
Ground ball rate | 52.4% | 41.1% | 44.2% |
Pull air rate | 14.3% | 22.1% | 16.8% |
Chase rate | 26% | 21.9% | 28.5% |
These numbers are not what you want to see. Kim is hitting the ball on the ground more than he ever has, pulling the ball in the air less than he ever has and chasing out of the zone more than he ever has. Does that sound like a good combination?
Hitting ground balls, while some are bound to find holes, greatly impacts a player's upside. More often than not, a ground ball will find a glove — and even when it doesn't, it'll be a single most of the time. Not pulling the ball in the air makes it incredibly tough, especially for a player like Kim who doesn't have much power, to do damage at the plate. When he hit 17 home runs in 2023, he did that while pulling the ball in the air more than 20 percent of the time. That mark is way down this season.
Chasing out of the zone results in either whiffs or poor contact. Kim hasn't whiffed much at all this season, but his 84.5 mph average exit velocity is a career low and well below his average of 87 mph. If you don't hit the ball hard, good luck finding holes and being productive.
The sample size is still small, and Kim is still walking a decent amount at the very least, but it's hard to find much to like about his offensive game right now. And that's just his offense: His defense, which is usually his calling card, isn't exactly in a good spot either.
Ha-Seong Kim's defensive decline makes him unplayable
Whether he's played at second base, third base or shortstop, Kim has been a high-end defender his entire MLB career. He didn't have a good defensive season in 2025, but he also dealt with injuries throughout. This season, though, while in a small sample, Kim's struggles in the field have been jarring.
Kim in 2026 | Kim in his career (before 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
OAA | -4 | 21 |
DRS | -1 | 22 |
Errors | 3 | 31 |
Kim has gone from a guy who has consistently ranked within the 80th percentile or higher in OAA to the seventh percentile in 2026 at -4 in just 17 games. Perhaps most alarmingly, he already has three errors in just 17 games, despite not committing more than 11 errors in a single season previously.
If Kim isn't hitting and is even a subpar defender right now, what value does he provide? Now, the defense is almost certainly going to improve as the season progresses — his track record is too strong to suggest it won't — but how can the Braves justify giving him starts when things have gone this poorly all around?
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