Two months of rain built a story line that baseball never got to finish. When the San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves finally played out their rained-out June makeup game on August 31 at Truist Park, the marquee subplot — a head-to-head look at Major League Baseball’s two South Korean everyday players, Lee Jung-hoo and Kim Ha-seong, on the same diamond — never actually happened. Lee took the field. Kim did not. And by the time the Giants had closed out a 7-3 win that snapped Atlanta’s seven-game winning streak, the box score told two very different stories about where each player’s season stands.
This is not a game recap about a duel that lived up to the hype. It’s the opposite: a story about an anticipated matchup that quietly evaporated, and what that absence reveals about the sharply diverging trajectories of two of the most closely watched Korean players in the majors.
A Makeup Game Two Months in the Making
The Giants and Braves were originally scheduled to meet in June, but rain forced a postponement, and the game sat unplayed on the calendar for more than two months. It was finally slotted in as a single makeup contest on August 31 local time (September 1 in Korea), played at Atlanta’s Truist Park.
The scheduling quirk put extra strain on San Francisco’s travel logistics. The Giants had just wrapped a four-game road series in Arizona that ran from August 27 through August 30, and rather than getting a breather, the team turned around and flew straight to Atlanta to fulfill the rescheduled date. For a club deep in the grind of a long season, that kind of back-to-back travel — road series into road series, with no true off-day cushion — is exactly the sort of unglamorous scheduling hurdle that rarely makes headlines but shapes how games like this one actually get played.
What made the date circle-worthy for Korean baseball fans specifically was the presence of two national stars on opposing sides: Lee Jung-hoo patrolling the outfield for San Francisco, and Kim Ha-seong holding down the infield for Atlanta. Both are among the small handful of South Korean position players who have established themselves as regular contributors in MLB lineups, and a game between their two clubs is a natural draw for anyone following Korea’s presence in American baseball. After a two-month wait, the matchup was finally on the schedule.
San Francisco Wins 7-3, Snaps Atlanta’s Streak
The final score was Giants 7, Braves 3, but the game did not stay close throughout. San Francisco broke it open in the sixth inning, when a solo home run from Osléivis Bazó ignited a four-run frame that put the outcome out of reach. That single inning was effectively the ballgame — Atlanta never found an answer for the sudden burst of offense, and the loss carried extra weight for the Braves because it ended a seven-game winning streak they had carried into the contest.
For a team that had been rolling, dropping a makeup game to a Giants squad fresh off a four-game road trip was a jarring way to see the streak end. There’s no getting around the fact that momentum matters in a long MLB season, and a seven-game run is the kind of stretch that can shift a club’s outlook heading into the stretch run. Atlanta had that run snapped in a game that, on paper, was supposed to be remembered for a Korean-on-Korean showdown. Instead, it will be remembered — at least in Atlanta — for the inning that got away from them.
Lee Jung-hoo: A Quiet Night That Ends a Hot Streak
Lee Jung-hoo started in right field, batting fifth for San Francisco, and finished the night 0-for-4 with a walk and a stolen base. It wasn’t the kind of production that draws headlines on its own, but it was notable for what it interrupted: Lee had strung together a three-game hitting streak heading into this contest, and the hitless night ended it.
The details of his night still showed the instincts that have made him a valuable everyday piece for San Francisco. After drawing a walk in the fourth inning, Lee took off and successfully stole his 12th base of the season — a reminder that even in a game where the bat wasn’t producing, he found another way to be a threat on the bases. That kind of secondary production, drawing walks and pressuring the defense on the bases, has been part of what’s kept his overall numbers respectable even through cold stretches at the plate.
The hitless night dropped Lee’s season batting average from .291 to .288, on a workload of 475 at-bats and 137 hits. That’s still a strong number in the context of a full MLB season — hitters who finish anywhere near .290 over 475 at-bats are having a genuinely good year — but the dip is a reminder that even productive hitters have nights (and stretches) where the timing isn’t there.
It’s also worth placing this game in the context of what came right before it. Two days earlier, on August 29, San Francisco played Arizona in a game the Giants ultimately lost 6-10. Lee was much more productive in that contest, going 3-for-3 at the plate with a walk, two runs scored, and another stolen base — his 11th of the season. In other words, Lee arrived in Atlanta on a genuine hot streak, riding real momentum into a game that Korean fans had circled for months. The 0-for-4 night against the Braves broke that streak at exactly the moment the spotlight was brightest, which is part of why the box score reads as a letdown even though nothing about a single hitless game is alarming in isolation.
Zoom out, and the bigger picture on Lee remains solidly positive. A .288 average with 137 hits in 475 at-bats, a dozen stolen bases, and the everyday right field job for a Giants team that’s clearly built its outfield around him — that’s the profile of a player who has made the jump to MLB look, if not effortless, at least sustainable. One quiet night at the plate doesn’t change that. What it does is set up the sharper contrast with what was happening on the other side of the field, where his fellow countryman wasn’t even in the lineup.
Kim Ha-seong: Held Out of the Lineup Amid a Historic Slump
Kim Ha-seong did not appear in this game at all. He was held out of the Atlanta lineup, meaning the anticipated Korean-versus-Korean matchup simply didn’t happen — not because of how either player performed on the field, but because one of them wasn’t on it.
The absence comes at the lowest ebb of what has been a brutal offensive season for Kim. At the point he was held out, his batting average sat at .081, a figure built on 86 at-bats and just 7 hits, according to eToday. A separate report from Sedaily, filed in the immediate aftermath of Kim’s August 29 game against Colorado, had the number at .084 on a slightly different sample of 83 at-bats and 7 hits. The two figures diverge slightly because they were captured at different moments and reflect different at-bat totals, but the headline is identical either way: Kim Ha-seong’s batting average has fallen into the low .080s, a level of offensive struggle that is exceptionally rare for a player who not long ago was regarded as one of the better all-around shortstops in the National League.
To put that number in perspective for readers unfamiliar with what a .081 or .084 batting average actually represents in Major League Baseball: it means Kim has been getting a hit in roughly one of every twelve at-bats. Even a struggling regular in MLB typically hits somewhere in the .220 to .240 range over a meaningful sample; dropping into the .080s, sustained across dozens of at-bats, is the kind of slump that becomes its own story independent of any single game. It’s the sort of stretch that gets a player benched, discussed on national broadcasts, and picked apart by every beat writer covering the team — not because anyone doubts his talent, but because the gap between what he’s shown in the past and what the stat line currently says is so stark.
The day before this game, on August 29 against Colorado, Kim went hitless in three at-bats but was hit by a pitch, which extended his on-base streak to three straight games even without a hit falling in. Atlanta won that game 6-4. Notably, Kim’s glove work in that contest was sharp — he turned a double play at second base, a reminder that even in the middle of an offensive freefall, the defensive instincts that made him valuable earlier in his career haven’t disappeared. It’s a split that will feel familiar to anyone who has watched a talented player go cold at the plate while still holding his own in the field: the bat has gone quiet, but the defense hasn’t.
Neither eToday nor Sedaily specified a reason for Kim being held out of the August 31 lineup against San Francisco — there was no explicit mention of injury, rest, or a strategic rotation decision in either report. What both outlets agreed on, consistently, was the scope of the slump itself: a season batting average that has cratered into the low .080s is impossible to spin, and both Korean sports outlets covered it as exactly what it is — a genuinely difficult stretch for a player who has previously been an All-Star-caliber presence at shortstop in the majors.
Why This Non-Matchup Actually Matters
There’s a temptation to treat a game where the headline matchup didn’t happen as a non-story. But the opposite is true here, and it comes down to timing. This game had been sitting on the calendar, unplayed, for more than two months because of a June rainout. In that gap, two things happened simultaneously and in opposite directions: Lee Jung-hoo consolidated his position as a legitimate everyday MLB hitter, climbing toward .290 with a well-rounded game that includes speed and plate discipline, while Kim Ha-seong’s season unraveled to the point where his batting average sits in territory that’s almost unheard of for an established big leaguer.
When the makeup date finally arrived, it landed at the exact moment that contrast was at its most extreme — and rather than putting both players on the field together to underline it, the game denied fans the matchup entirely. Kim’s absence from the lineup meant the story became about what didn’t happen rather than what did. For a fan base that had been waiting two months for this specific pairing, watching the box score and seeing Kim’s name missing from the lineup card was its own kind of anticlimax.
It’s also a useful reminder of how differently individual seasons can unfold even for players who arrived in MLB around the same time, with similar pedigrees, from the same country. Lee Jung-hoo came over as a decorated KBO League hitter and has translated that skill set into a steady, everyday role in San Francisco’s outfield. Kim Ha-seong built his MLB reputation with a strong two-way game at shortstop, good enough in prior seasons to draw All-Star consideration. Neither player’s current form — Lee’s productive if unspectacular .288, Kim’s alarming .081 — was a foregone conclusion at the start of the year. That’s what makes tracking both of them, game to game, genuinely compelling: their seasons are proof that even accomplished players at the same level of competition can end up on wildly different paths within the same year.
What to Watch Going Forward
For Lee Jung-hoo, the question is whether the three-game hitting streak he carried into this game was the start of another surge, or whether the 0-for-4 against Atlanta is the start of a cooldown. A .288 average with pop in the stolen-base column is a strong foundation either way, and San Francisco has clearly built its outfield picture around him as an everyday presence.
For Kim Ha-seong, the more pressing question is simpler and more urgent: can he find any traction at the plate at all. A .081 or .084 average this deep into a season is not a stretch a player quietly plays his way out of over a handful of games — it typically requires a sustained run of good at-bats to move the needle by even a few points, given how many at-bats are already banked. Whether Kim gets those opportunities, and whether Atlanta continues to write him into the lineup regularly while he searches for answers, is worth watching closely in the weeks ahead.
As for the two of them sharing a field again — no confirmed date for a next meeting between the Giants and Braves, or for another head-to-head look at Lee and Kim, had been reported as of this game. When it does happen, it will be worth checking whether the storyline that got deferred here — two Korean big leaguers, same field, radically different seasons — finally gets its moment, or whether one more absence keeps the rematch on hold yet again.
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