On September 10, with the Atlanta Braves clinging to a 1-0 lead over the
Tampa Bay Rays in the eighth inning, Kim Ha-sung stepped in against reliever
Kevin Kelly with two runners on and one out. He turned around a sinker and
lined it into play for two runs. Tampa Bay would add only one more run the
rest of the way. Atlanta won 3-1, snapped a three-game losing streak, and
the hit that put the game out of reach belonged to a shortstop who, at one
point earlier this season, was hitting .067.
For a lot of players, a single eighth-inning hit in a mid-September game
would be a footnote. For Kim Ha-sung, it is the latest data point in a
season-long story about a former Gold Glove winner trying to prove, swing
by swing, that he still belongs on a major-league roster — on a contract
his own team chose to keep paying even when the results gave them every
excuse to move on.
The hit itself
Kim started the game batting ninth and playing shortstop, a lineup spot
that tells its own story about where his season has been. He went 2-for-3
on the night. The key at-bat came in the eighth inning: Atlanta led 1-0,
Tampa Bay had runners’ attention elsewhere with Kim at the plate and two
Braves on base with one out, and Kim turned on Kevin Kelly’s sinker for a
two-run single. Newdaily, MHN Sports, and TSN Korea all reported the same
sequence — the count, the situation, the pitch type — and all credited
Kim’s hit as the go-ahead, ultimately game-deciding run, since Tampa Bay
could only answer with a single run in the ninth. It was Kim’s second
multi-hit performance of the season, and it lifted his batting average
from .110 to .126, with his RBI total for the year climbing to eight.
Those numbers — a .126 average even after a good night — tell you
immediately that this is not a story about a player having a normal
season. It is a story about a player clawing back from one of the worst
statistical stretches of his career, one hit at a time, in low-stakes
September games that matter far more to him personally than they do to
the Braves’ position in the standings.
Who Kim Ha-sung is, for readers meeting him here
Kim Ha-sung came up through the KBO with the Kiwoom Heroes before signing
with the San Diego Padres in 2021, and he built a real reputation in the
major leagues as one of the best defensive infielders in baseball. In
November 2023, he became the first Korean-born player to win a Gold Glove
Award, taking home the National League’s utility honor and beating out
Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman for it — a year after he had already been a
finalist at shortstop. For a stretch, he was a model of defensive
versatility at the highest level of the sport, a player opposing teams
had to account for even when his bat was inconsistent.
The version of Kim Ha-sung on the field in Atlanta this September is a
player trying to get back to that level after a brutal run of injuries.
This year alone, he underwent surgery in January for a torn tendon in the
middle finger of his right hand, a significant injury for any hitter, let
alone a middle infielder who depends on bat control. He did not return to
a major-league lineup until May 13. Even after that return, he was in and
out of the lineup with further injury issues and rehab stints, and his
batting average cratered to as low as .067 to .087 during parts of the
season — numbers that, for almost any other player, would have ended the
season’s playing time altogether.
A contract that reflects how much the Braves still believe in him
What makes Atlanta’s patience notable is the money involved. After the
2024 season, Kim signed a two-year, $29 million deal with the Tampa Bay
Rays that included an opt-out after the 2025 season. A shoulder labrum
tear slowed him through much of 2025, and he was released by Tampa Bay
in September of that year before joining the Braves. Rather than simply
collecting a guaranteed $16 million for 2026 under his existing deal, Kim
opted out and returned to free agency — a real gamble on himself given
how the 2025 season had gone. Atlanta responded by re-signing him to a
one-year, $20 million contract, four million dollars more than the
guaranteed money he had walked away from.
That is not a depth-chart contract. It is the kind of deal a team signs
when it still believes, at its core, in what a player has shown he can
do — even while watching him hit .067 in real time. According to Newsis
and News1, as speculation about a trade or release mounted earlier this
year, Atlanta chose instead to designate infielder Jorge Mateo for
assignment rather than part ways with Kim. That is about as clear a
signal as a front office can send without saying it outright: the team
views Kim’s track record, and particularly his defense, as worth
protecting through a slump that would have ended a lesser contract’s
shelf life months ago.
Why a $20 million infielder was hitting .067
It is worth sitting with how steep Kim’s statistical decline has actually
been, because the scale of it is what makes September 10’s hit meaningful
rather than incidental. A player who won a Gold Glove two years ago, who
was good enough to command a $29 million free-agent contract the year
after that, spent stretches of this season performing at a level you
would expect from a September call-up fighting to make a roster, not an
established big leaguer on a $20 million deal. The finger surgery in
January explains part of it — bat control is one of the first things to
suffer when a hand injury lingers — but the subsequent in-season injuries
and rehab assignments compounded the problem, denying him the consistent
at-bats a hitter typically needs to find a rhythm.
Viewed against that backdrop, the climb from .067 to .110 to .126 is not
a dramatic turnaround in the traditional sense. Nobody is going to call
Kim Ha-sung’s 2026 season a successful one based on a batting average
still in the low .100s this late in the year. But the trajectory is
upward, the hits are coming in higher-leverage spots rather than garbage
time, and the eighth-inning single against Tampa Bay is exactly the kind
of situational, productive at-bat that a team hoping a player’s bat is
slowly coming back to life wants to see.
What the win itself meant
Context matters here too. Atlanta had dropped three straight games before
this one, and Tampa Bay is not an opponent any team wants to let beat
them at home. A 3-1 win built on a bullpen holding a one-run lead into
the late innings, and then extended by a two-out, two-RBI knock from the
nine-hole hitter, is the kind of game that can function as a small
reset for a club — a reminder that even the bottom of the order can
deliver when it matters. For Kim specifically, doing that from the ninth
spot in the lineup, the role a struggling veteran is typically given
while a team waits to see if he can still help, adds another layer to the
story. He delivered exactly the kind of at-bat that justifies keeping him
in that lineup spot rather than on the bench entirely.
What the Gold Glove actually meant
It is easy to let a specific award become a throwaway credential, so it
is worth explaining why the 2023 utility Gold Glove mattered as much as
it did. MLB created the utility category in 2022 specifically to
recognize players who move between multiple infield and outfield
positions while staying elite defensively at all of them — a much harder
standard than simply being the best defender at one spot. Kim won it by
beating out Mookie Betts, one of the most decorated all-around players
of his generation, and Tommy Edman, himself a multiple-time Gold Glove
winner. Being the first Korean-born player to win any Gold Glove, in a
category designed around defensive versatility, is the specific
achievement that made teams willing to pay him big money even through
stretches where his bat went cold — defense like that does not
disappear overnight, even when a hand injury disrupts a season.
The finger injury, in practical terms
The January surgery is also worth unpacking a little further, because a
torn tendon in the middle finger of the throwing or lead hand is a
particularly stubborn injury for a hitter. Bat control — the small,
split-second adjustments a hitter makes to stay on a pitch, to check a
swing, to fight off something inside — depends heavily on fine motor
function in the fingers. A pitcher can often work around a finger issue
more easily than a position player who needs to grip and control a bat
the same way, at full speed, dozens of times a night. That helps explain
why Kim’s return on May 13 did not immediately translate into the
player he had been in San Diego, and why it took months of additional
injury setbacks and rehab assignments before his bat showed any sign of
coming back to life. The swing on September 10 — square contact on a
sinker, driven the other way for two runs — is exactly the kind of
finger-dependent, late-adjustment contact that a compromised hand makes
difficult.
What still isn’t resolved
None of this settles the larger question hanging over Kim’s season:
whether Atlanta’s bet on his track record will ultimately pay off over
the rest of this year and into whatever comes next in free agency. A
.126 average, even one trending upward, is not where a $20 million
shortstop wants to be sitting in mid-September. The specifics of his
role going forward — how often he starts, whether the Braves view him as
a piece for next season or simply as a player they are letting finish
out this one with dignity — were not addressed in the reporting around
this game, and this post will not speculate on them. What is established
is narrower and more concrete: on September 10, in a key spot, Kim
Ha-sung got the biggest hit of the game, and his average moved in the
right direction because of it.
Hitting ninth, and what that says about trust
There is also something worth reading into the lineup card itself. For
most of his career in San Diego, Kim Ha-sung hit in the middle of the
order or near the top, a spot reserved for hitters a manager trusts to
produce consistently. Batting ninth, as he did against Tampa Bay, is
typically where a club slots a player it is still evaluating — good
enough defensively to be in the lineup every day, but not yet trusted
enough with the bat to hit in a higher-leverage spot. That placement is
itself a quiet acknowledgment of where Kim’s season has been. What makes
September 10 notable is that the hit came from that very spot, in the
kind of situation — two on, one out, a one-run lead to protect — that
lineups are designed to turn over to the top of the order, not the
bottom of it. A nine-hole hitter delivering the decisive blow is a small
sign that a team’s evaluation of a struggling veteran might be starting
to shift, even if the batting average itself has not caught up yet.
Why this one is worth watching
Strip away the league standings and the contract figures, and this is a
comeback story in the most literal sense — a player who was, by the
numbers, among the worst qualified hitters in the major leagues earlier
this season, working his way back toward respectability through exactly
the kind of situational, clutch at-bats that made him valuable in the
first place. It will take a lot more nights like September 10 before
anyone calls Kim Ha-sung’s 2026 season a success. But for one night in
Atlanta, with the Braves’ losing streak on the line, he was the player
his contract says he should be.
Follow the story
Tiarat Sports follows every Korean player across Major League Baseball,
because their stories are Korean baseball stories even when they are
played out an ocean away from the KBO. For updates on Kim Ha-sung’s
recovery and the rest of Atlanta’s stretch run, follow
@tiarat_sports.
Sources: Newdaily, MHN Sports, TSN Korea, Newsis, Nocut News.