Kim Ha-seong won a Gold Glove in San Diego. Right now, in Atlanta, he can’t get off the bench.
The infielder who anchored the Padres’ infield for four seasons and earned a National League Gold Glove in 2023 is in the middle of the worst stretch of his professional career — and it’s happening in front of a new fanbase that barely got to see him at his best.
The Numbers
| Stat | 2026 Season |
|---|---|
| Batting average | .068 (5-for-73) |
| Home runs | 0 |
| RBI | 3 |
| Games played | 27 |
A .068 average isn’t a slump in the ordinary sense of the word. It’s a stat line that would get most players optioned to the minors, if the roster rules at this stage of the season allowed for it as easily as they do in April. Instead, Atlanta has quietly benched him — three straight games, zero plate appearances — rather than sending him down.
From the Injured List to the Bench
Kim returned to Atlanta’s active roster in early August after missing time with inflammation in his right middle finger. Since then, the situation hasn’t improved. He’s been benched for three consecutive games, without a single plate appearance, while the Braves have started rookie Jim Jarvis and utility infielder Mauricio Dubón at shortstop instead.
For a player who was, as recently as 2023, considered one of the best defensive shortstops in the National League, watching a rookie take his position from the bench is a jarring change — and a fast one. Twenty-seven games is a small sample in the context of a 162-game season, but it’s not so small that a team stops making decisions based on it.
What Is the “Posting System,” and Why Does It Matter Here?
If you’re not deep into international baseball, the term “posting system” is worth pausing on, because it explains almost everything about how a player like Kim ends up wearing an MLB uniform in the first place. Korean and Japanese players under contract to a domestic club can’t simply become free agents and sign wherever they like once they decide they want to try MLB. Instead, their KBO team can “post” them — essentially putting them up for a bidding process among interested MLB clubs. The winning MLB team then negotiates a contract directly with the player, but also has to pay the player’s original KBO team a separate posting fee, calculated as a percentage of the player’s new contract value.
This system is why a single successful — or unsuccessful — posted player carries so much weight beyond his own career. The posting fee alone can be worth tens of millions of dollars to the KBO club that developed him, and the perceived success of each posted player directly shapes how aggressively the next MLB front office bids on the next available KBO free agent. Kim’s four solid seasons in San Diego, capped by a Gold Glove, made the next generation of KBO infielders — including some of the very players now competing with or against him — more attractive to MLB scouts. A rough finish to his Atlanta tenure works in the opposite direction.
How He Got Here: San Diego and the 2021 Posting
Kim’s path to MLB ran through the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes, who posted him for MLB clubs after the 2020 season. San Diego won the bidding, signing him to a four-year, $28 million guaranteed deal with a fifth-year option that could push the total value to $39 million — at the time, one of the largest contracts ever given to a position player coming directly out of the KBO. The Padres paid the Heroes a $5.525 million posting fee to acquire his rights.
That contract paid off. Over four seasons in San Diego, Kim developed into an everyday NL infielder, made an All-Star team, and won a Gold Glove — establishing himself as proof that a KBO position player, not just a pitcher, could be a legitimate everyday MLB contributor. It’s exactly that track record that makes this season’s numbers so jarring by comparison.
Why This Matters Beyond One Player’s Slump
Every Korean player who takes the posting-system leap to MLB carries some of that credibility with him — teams evaluating the next KBO free agent look at how the last one performed. A total collapse at the plate, especially one severe enough to result in a bench role rather than everyday play, doesn’t just affect Kim’s own next contract. It becomes a data point in how aggressively MLB front offices bid on the next wave of KBO position players.
That’s part of why this story is being watched closely well beyond Atlanta. Kim isn’t a marginal roster player having a bad year — he’s one of the players who proved the posting system works for infielders, not just power arms. What happens with him for the rest of this season says something about the durability of that proof.
What Comes Next
The finger injury complicates any read on his bat — inflammation in the hand or fingers can linger and affect grip strength and bat speed long after a player is medically cleared to return, and teams are often cautious about saying so publicly while a player is still trying to play through it. Whether Atlanta’s coaching staff believes the injury is still a factor, or whether they’ve simply decided Jarvis and Dubón give them a better everyday option right now, hasn’t been made explicit.
What’s clear is that a former Gold Glove winner is watching from the bench in the second half of a season for the first time in his MLB career. How the Braves handle the rest of Kim’s season — full rebuild of his swing, a return to everyday play once healthy, or a reduced bench role for the stretch run — will shape how his contract situation is viewed heading into next season.
The Quick Facts
- Player: Kim Ha-seong, infielder, Atlanta Braves
- 2026 season: .068 average, 0 HR, 3 RBI in 27 games
- Recent status: Benched 3 straight games after returning from a right middle finger injury
- Career highlight: 2023 National League Gold Glove (San Diego Padres)
- How he got to MLB: Posted by the Kiwoom Heroes in late 2020; signed with San Diego for up to $39 million over five years
- Who’s playing his position now: Rookie Jim Jarvis and utility infielder Mauricio Dubón
A Wider Pattern: How KBO Position Players Adjust to MLB
It’s worth stepping back from Kim’s individual case to note something broader about how KBO hitters have historically fared in MLB. Pitchers who make the jump tend to have a more predictable adjustment period — velocity and pitch shape translate in fairly measurable ways. Hitters are messier. KBO pitching, on average, features fewer high-velocity fastballs and a different mix of secondary pitches than a typical MLB staff, which means even elite KBO contact hitters often go through a real recalibration period against major league stuff. Some players make that adjustment within a season. Others take multiple years, and a few never fully close the gap. None of that guarantees Kim’s slump reverses course — but it does mean a single bad stretch, even a historically bad one, isn’t automatically a verdict on a player who has already proven he can play at this level for four seasons.
Source: Ilgan Sports, News1 (2026 season stats and benching); Daum, The Kyunghyang Shinmun, Nate Sports (2021 posting and San Diego contract background)
Frequently Asked Questions
Why doesn’t Atlanta just send Kim Ha-seong to the minors?
MLB roster rules make this more complicated than it sounds. Players with enough major league service time and the type of contract Kim signed generally have some level of protection against being freely optioned to the minor leagues without their consent, depending on the specific terms of the deal. Beyond the roster mechanics, benching a struggling veteran while still giving him a locker in the majors is also simply a common organizational choice — it keeps him around MLB-level coaching and video resources while the team figures out whether the issue is health-related, mechanical, or both.
Has Kim Ha-seong ever gone through a slump like this before?
Not at this level of severity during his MLB tenure. His four seasons in San Diego were defined by steady, well-rounded production and elite defense rather than extreme streaks in either direction — which is exactly why a stretch this far outside his established performance range has drawn so much attention from both Korean and American baseball media.
Does this affect his future contract value?
It’s still early to say definitively, but any prolonged stretch on the bench during a contract year or the season before free agency tends to weigh on a player’s next deal, particularly for a player whose value has always been tied more to consistency and defense than to standout offensive ceiling. A strong finish to the season could largely repair the picture; an extended trend in the current direction would not.
Is his defense still elite even while he’s struggling to hit?
Defensive metrics haven’t been part of the reporting on this specific stretch, and it’s worth being cautious about assuming his glove is automatically unaffected — a lingering finger injury, in particular, can influence throwing and fielding mechanics just as much as it affects a swing. What’s clear is that the benching decisions to date appear to be about more than just the batting average alone.
What should fans watch for in the coming weeks?
Three things will tell the story from here: whether Kim starts getting regular plate appearances again, whether his underlying contact quality (not just his batting average) shows signs of life in whatever appearances he does get, and whether the Braves’ public comments — if any come — frame this as an injury issue, a performance issue, or both. A team that believes the finger is still the primary problem will likely be more patient than one that has simply concluded a healthier alternative gives them a better everyday option right now.
Looking Ahead
There’s a version of this story where Kim rediscovers his timing in September, reclaims his starting job, and this stretch becomes a forgotten footnote in an otherwise solid season. There’s also a version where the bench role becomes semi-permanent for the rest of the year, and the Braves head into the offseason with real questions about his 2027 role. Both are still realistic outcomes with several weeks of the season left to play. What makes this worth tracking closely, beyond Kim’s individual situation, is what it signals more broadly: MLB teams and fans are still calibrating how much patience a struggling KBO-posted infielder deserves relative to a domestically-developed player with a similar track record — and how that calibration plays out here will quietly shape how the next posted KBO infielder gets treated the first time he hits a rough patch of his own.
Kim’s situation also lands at an interesting moment for how MLB teams evaluate posted infielders generally. A wave of Korean and Japanese infielders has entered the league in recent years, each carrying some of the credibility built by the players who came before them. A rough finish to Kim’s Atlanta tenure won’t erase what he accomplished in San Diego, but it will become part of the case study front offices reference the next time they’re deciding how aggressively to bid on the next available KBO infielder — alongside the success stories, not instead of them.
For now, the most useful thing Atlanta fans and Korean baseball followers alike can do is separate the two questions being asked at once here. The first is narrow and mechanical: is a finger injury still affecting his swing, and does regular playing time fix that once he’s fully healthy? The second is broader and slower to answer: has a four-time everyday MLB infielder simply hit a wall against big-league pitching that a change in matchups or a return to health won’t solve? Nothing in the reporting so far answers the second question definitively — which is exactly why every plate appearance he does get over the rest of this season is going to be read so closely by people trying to answer it anyway.