The Yankees are trying to replace Juan Soto; at least that’s what they’re telling themselves, because let’s be honest there’s no way to replace that kind of WAR value with just one roster spot. What the Yankees are trying to do is use their money and prospect capital to acquire as much talent as possible with the assets allotted towards the 2024-2025 winter. So far they’ve targeted star pitching and position players that can more than hold their own at their projected position, and we could see them triple-down with Ha-Seong Kim.
A dynamic fielder who just mops up WAR value with dazzling plays and excellent speed, Kim is the perfect second baseman for the current rules in Major League Baseball, limiting shifts and expanding the running game for great athletes to take over ballgames. The Yankees need more juice in their infield, and while you aren’t signing him to get power in your lineup, Ha-Seong Kim is the kind of high-floor contributor the lineup sorely needs.
How Ha-Seong Kim Builds Into the Yankees’ Team Identity
The Yankees want to have a strong defensive team; if their team defense wasn’t firmly in mind when assembling this roster I doubt that they’d be showing little interest in the various home-run mashers like Pete Alonso or Teoscar Hernandez. It’s not that power is hard to find on the market; it’s that Brian Cashman doesn’t identify that as a massive issue with the roster right now.
Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisholm, and Austin Wells have proven Major League power, with Jasson Dominguez certainly showing tons of upside with the pop in his bat. That’s seven projected starters with 20+ HR upside, with the best of that group being the best home run hitter in the entire sport. Ha-Seong Kim and Anthony Volpe would be their powerless bats, but both are good for double-digit home run totals.
What this team can also do is field the ball extremely well, with Jasson Dominguez being the only player with below-average defensive numbers at their projected positions. To his right and left will be two Gold Glovers in the corner outfielders with howitzers for arms in Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge, but the infield is where this team may have the most defensive potential.
If you add Ha-Seong Kim to the infield, likely at second base due to his elite-level range, the Yankees would have a premium double-play duo with Anthony Volpe at shortstop.
Anthony Volpe is one of the best defensive shortstops in the game and Ha-Seong Kim is an equally dominant defender at second base. These two could prevent a ton of runs, and at the corners, they’d have the uber-athletic Jazz Chisholm and the rock-solid Paul Goldschmidt. Brian Cashman emphasizes defense and athleticism whenever he speaks to the media, this kind of middle infield duo oozes jaw-dropping defensive play that would tantalize viewers all year.
Ha-Seong Kim also provides incredible baserunning value thanks to his excellent speed and his high baseball IQ, as he’s swiped 60 bases over the past two seasons with an 81.1% success rate. The Yankees have been abhorrent on the bases in each of the last two seasons, not just failing to have speed but also making boneheaded mistakes and struggling to take extra bases that the defense gives to them.
This isn’t just your typical bad baserunning team either, the Yankees were historically awful relative to their franchise standards.
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Since integration, the 2024 Yankees were by far the worst baserunning team in franchise history, making even the 2023 team look competent with their legs. Being this terrible on the bases can be masked by a dominant offense, but even then it wasn’t enough to be considered favorites against the Dodgers, who were good but severely injured as they lost Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw ahead of the playoffs.
Last year’s team also finished as a worse team in terms of Pythag. Win-Loss record than their 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 teams, which all had at least 99 wins compared to 96. It was a team that could contend for the World Series, but not one that I would classify as utterly dominant, more uniquely excellent because of how much they relied upon their two megastars to win baseball games.
I hate the concept of “spreading the wealth” compared to acquiring a superstar player and I still don’t love this notion that you can get players to recreate Juan Soto in the aggregate. If you try to build a similar team to the 2024 one, you’ll end up with a crappy team that could sneak into the postseason in a weak American League, but if you build a team that looks to strengthen the flaws that you did have with a Judge-Soto duo, you can build a pretty good club.
Ha-Seong Kim is a player this team hasn’t had since Brett Gardner; an OBP threat who can make tons of contact, run the bases extremely well, and play elite defense at a position that can be difficult to handle.
Ha-Seong Kim has also been an above-average hitter in each of the last three seasons, and while last year was a step back in his wRC+ (101), his sudden drop in BABIP would indicate to me that he had some poor luck. The odds that Kim has a .261 BABIP in 2025 are pretty low as his career mark stands at .281, and Steamer projects him for a solid .284 BABIP, fueling a solid 106 wRC+ projection.
His OBP and wRC+ would mirror what Gleyber Torres provided atop the lineup last season, with Kim running back-to-back seasons with a walk rate over 12%. Ha-Seong Kim does that while being a far better defender and baserunner than Torrees, and if we can get a healthy season of the infielder at second base, he might be a 4-5 WAR player, as he posted a 4.2 fWAR and 5.8 bWAR in 2023.
The Yankees aren’t getting an MVP-caliber player in Ha-Seong Kim, but he’s one of the best infielders on the market and fits the identity of this team perfectly.