What Do the Giants Do With Jung Hoo Lee?

During his time in the KBO, Jung Hoo Lee solidified himself as one of the most talented players in the league’s history. He took home an MVP award and proved he could do everything you could ask of him on a baseball field.

That led to the San Francisco Giants paying the superstar a hefty chunk of change to choose the Bay Area a few winters ago. Looking back, the $113 million deal he signed seems like a big price tag, but San Francisco fully believed they were getting the player they’d seen when scouting him in Korea.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t quite lived up to the hype. By no means has Lee been a bad big-leaguer, but there’s definitely been some growing pains since coming stateside, with an alarming amount of inconsistency at the plate.

For the organization, President Buster Posey has some big decisions ahead of him after the club lost just under 100 games in 2026. Surely, some changes are in store for the orange and black.

Not only did they have a handful of young outfield prospects debut this year, but one could argue the Giants could be getting the same level of production for a fraction of the $63 million and some change Lee is owed over the next three seasons.

Inconsistently Consistent

Coming over, the biggest thing fans expected from the Grandson of the Wind was a pure ability to hit for average with a minuscule strikeout rate. Lee wasn’t known for power, and that wasn’t going to randomly show up when facing MLB arms in the pitcher-friendly confines of Oracle Park.

At times, we’ve seen that ability to hit on full display.

In Lee’s 236 plate appearances from April 10 to June 23, he went on a run that made fans believe he had finally arrived in the big leagues for good. He hit .366 during that span with a 155 wRC+, .912 OPS and minuscule 7.2% strikeout rate.

He was showcasing everything Giants fans thought they’d be getting when he originally signed.

However, the run that followed has been the biggest problem with Lee’s tenure in San Francisco. In the next 294 plate appearances, Lee hit just .223 with a .276 OBP and 72 wRC+.

The season was truly a tale of two halves.

It was a similar story in 2025 — his first full season in MLB. Lee had started the season on a tear, highlighted by a multi-homer game at Yankee Stadium to really put his name on the map.

But again, he went on to get cold for two months and then get hot to finish the season strong. Despite the clear inconsistency, fans didn’t think too much of it.

It was basically Lee’s rookie season, and he had posted 2.4 fWAR with a 108 wRC+. The optimists in San Francisco just assumed that in 2026, he would skip the part in the middle of the season where he struggled.

As we mentioned, though, that stretch came again, but at the tail end of the season.

Even with the completely different routes of getting there, Lee’s season numbers ended up eerily similar between the two campaigns.

It doesn’t help that Lee has been a rather abysmal defender between center and right field since making the jump, either.

In over 2,700 innings, he’s racked up -26 defensive runs saved and -12 outs above average, virtually killing his value accumulation.

So, What Now?

While that looks like a rather average big-leaguer on the surface, the issue is the price tag. He’s owed $23.25 million this year, and if he opts in after the season — which feels like a guarantee at this point — he’s owed $20.5 million in each of the following two seasons.

This begs the question — does Buster Posey float Lee on the trade market this winter? If the Giants were willing to slightly pay down some of the remaining money, there’d definitely be a market.

In this instance, it wouldn’t be about the return, but about the open outfield spot and overall savings. The Giants need to fully rebuild their pitching staff — rotation and pen — and every available dollar on that front helps.

Not to mention, the organization’s top outfield prospect — Bo Davidson — got a cup of coffee toward the end of this season and looks like a big piece of the club’s future.

Other young outfielders like Jonah Cox, Turner Hill, Scott Bandura, and Victor Bericoto opened some eyes throughout the 2026 campaign as well.

From a business perspective, however, Lee equals dollar signs. The entire baseball fandom of South Korea immediately turned into Giants fans once he chose the Bay Area, and if you were to take a stroll around Oracle Park on any given night, you’d find a healthy amount of J.H. Lee jerseys around the stadium.

Even if the Giants once thought they were getting a superstar at a discount, they now have to weigh all the options on whether Jung Hoo Lee’s future still remains in San Francisco.