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A dominant, run-producing outfielder for Korea's Kiwoom Heroes, Lee will be posted to join an MLB organization after the 2023 season. After batting .349 with 23 homers in 2022, he won the KBO MVP award. He also has serious baseball lineage — and an amazing nickname as a result.
His father, Jong-beom Lee, is a KBO icon dubbed "Son of the Wind." Yep, that means your favorite team could employ in 2024 a new star known as "Grandson of the Wind."
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Lee played in the 2023 WBC for Korea.
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Jung-Hoo is the best player on the WBC Korean team because of his impact bat. He has a short, level swing and special bat-to-ball skills.
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For the Giants’ top executive to leave the country in the middle of a managerial search — and for GM Pete Putila to do the same, attending center fielder Jung-hoo Lee’s farewell cameo for Kiwoom Heroes in South Korea earlier this month — tells you all you need to know about how strongly the Giants intend to push to sign top international free agents.
According to a source familiar with the Korean market, Lee will be motivated to sign with a team that will commit to using him in an everyday role and exhibit the patience to let him work through potential slumps. Lee, a 25-year-old center fielder, is a lifetime .340 hitter with premium bat-to-ball skills and is considered KBO’s best player. He had his best season in 2022, hitting a career-high 23 home runs while batting .349 with 66 walks. He struck out a ridiculously low 32 times in 553 at-bats.
Lee sustained a fractured ankle on July 22 and was only able to make it back for a token farewell on Oct. 10, when he took one at-bat and grounded out before addressing Heroes fans. Putila was a conspicuous attendee as he applauded from the stands.
“Pure spectacle,” said one agent who has represented KBO players. “Obviously, he wasn’t there to scout one at-bat. But that is what will tug at Lee’s heartstrings. He’s a superstar there. The teams that have a chance to sign him will be the ones that treat him like a star player.” (Baggarly - Oct 19, 2023 - The Athletic)
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Dec 14, 2023: Giants finalized the six-year deal with KBO star Jung Hoo Lee, via scout Evan Hsueh.
One of Korea’s best players, Lee was posted by the Kiwoom Heroes after seven seasons in the KBO, allowing him to seek an opportunity in Major League Baseball. The 25-year-old outfielder posted an eye-popping .340/.407/.491 slash line during his KBO career, never hitting below .318 in any season. Also considered an above-average defender in center field, Lee has the potential to impact both sides of the ball as he makes the leap to MLB. (M Guardado - MLB.com - Dec 14, 2023) -
He is the "Grandson of the Wind." When Jung Hoo was named the 2022 Korea Baseball Organization MVP, it wasn’t the first time in family history.
His father, Jong Beom, won the award in 1994 while stealing a KBO-record 84 bases, earning him the nickname “Son of the Wind.”
Beginning his remarks in English, Jung Hoo introduced himself to Giants fans as the “Grandson of the Wind
.”
#51 JERSEY -
The meaning behind his No. 51 jersey: His father’s 19-year playing career began in Korea, for the Kia Tigers, but eventually took him to the Chunichi Dragons in Nagoya, Japan, where Jung Hoo was born.
That was in 1998, when Ichiro Suzuki was on the rise with the Orix Buffaloes, three years before becoming the first position player to make the leap from Nippon Professional Baseball to the major leagues. Lee admired him ever since.
His Kiwoom Heroes number was also 51.
“When I first started playing baseball, I watched Ichiro and he was one of my favorite players growing up,” Lee said. “I’ve been a fan of this number since I was a kid.”
The number on the back of his jersey isn’t the only trait Lee shares with Ichiro.
Lee topped out at 23 homers, and his exit velocities aren’t popping off the charts. But he batted .340 and got on base at a .403 clip over his career in Korea while hardly ever striking out.
“When I thought about what I could do well as a kid, I decided it was to make contact. I felt it was important to make contact while still taking full swings,” Lee said. “Striking out means you’re just going down without a fight. But once you put the ball in play, you never know what’s going to happen. So I’ve always tried to do whatever it takes to make contact, and I think that’s how I’ve become so good at it.”
When his undersized frame steps into the left-handed batter’s box, and he drops his barrel into the far reaches of the strike zone to poke a ball into the outfield grass, the comparison doesn’t look like such a stretch.
“You can see he’s patterned his game off of him and has a lot of the same skills,” Zaidi said. “I think it’s an increasingly rare skill.” (E Webeck - Dec. 17, 2023)
- Lee said that he chose #51 as his new jersey number for the Giants because when he was young his father forced him to bat lefthanded instead of his natural tendency to bat right. He then became a fan of Ichiro Suzuki and used his number as his own.
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He’s best friends with Ha-Seong Kim. The Giants open next season in San Diego, and you can bet the two former Kiwoom Heroes teammates will grab a meal together. It’d better be Lee picking up the check, as a thank you to Kim’s four-year, $20 million contract paving the way to his $113 million payday over the next six years.
That contract looks like a bargain now for Kim, who turned into a 5-win player after he was given an everyday opportunity.
The Padres’ shortstop is set to be a free agent next winter, and a reunion might not be out of the cards, especially if Marco Luciano doesn’t seize the Giants’ shortstop job.
After all, the manager who oversaw Kim’s breakout in San Diego, Bob Melvin, is now in San Francisco.
“Ha-seong reached out to congratulated me and told me I will be playing under a great manager,” Lee said. “He was my spiritual leader in Korea. I was able to start dreaming big dreams thanks to his great advice. It’s at once surreal and exciting to put aside our friendship and face each other. I’ll be asking him a lot of questions.” (E Webeck - Dec. 17, 2023)
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Jan 15, 2024: Jung Hoo Lee has said that he was asleep when the call first came in from Woo-Suk Go, who, at the time, had been his longtime competitor on the diamond from their youth all the way up to both becoming stars of the KBO League, the top level of baseball competition in South Korea.
And that led to one of those record-scratch moments.
“Around this time last year, [Go] called to tell me that he’d started seeing my sister,” Lee told the Ilyo Newspaper in Korean last December. “I’d been asleep, so I had no idea what he was saying, and I tried to hang up after saying, ‘Got it.’ [Go] asked again, ‘Is that OK?’ and I told him again it was OK and went back to sleep. Everything to know about new Giants star, including his great nickname “When I woke up, I remembered what [Go] had said, so I called him back and asked, ‘What? You’re dating my sister? Why?’”
Not long after, Go and Ga-Hyun Lee (sister to Jung Hoo) were married in January 2023, per Nate Sports -- and that linked two of the KBO’s high-profile players, who are now bringing their family connection across the Pacific Ocean to a renewed rivalry in the highly competitive NL West.
Lee is the Giants’ premier acquisition of the offseason as the former KBO MVP and “Grandson of the Wind” -- a reference to his former baseball superstar father’s nickname, “Son of the Wind.” He introduced himself with a charming and charismatic press conference after he signed a six-year, $113 million deal to become the Giants’ center fielder following years of stardom with the Nexen/Kiwoom Heroes in Korea, where he was teammates with Ha-Seong Kim.
Go soon followed with a two-year, $4.5 million deal to join Kim in San Diego after having served as the closer for the defending KBO champion LG Twins. He most recently closed out the decisive Game 5 of the Korea Series to snap a 29-year championship drought for the Twins. “It’s a good thing that [Go] set career highs and established himself as the best closer after meeting my sister,” Lee joked in Korean to Ilyo. “If his performance had been worse, he’d have been in trouble.”
That brought the Family of the Wind -- so to speak -- to the American West Coast, where their family connection and rivalry will reach new heights as the culmination of a journey that began as teenagers for the longtime competitors-turned-brothers-in-law.
“Go and I have been competing since my third year of middle school,” Lee said in Korean after receiving the 2022 KBO MVP Award, according to the Yonhap News
. “I could only win if I could hit [Go]’s pitches, so I remember setting the pitching machine to throw really hard in order to train for him.”Lee and Go aren’t the only such relations to cross paths in the Majors, of course -- and Lee isn’t even the first Giant to share the league with his brother-in-law in recent years.
Brandon Crawford and Gerrit Cole also share that relationship, with Crawford notably homering off Cole when the Giants and Astros squared off in 2018. José Berríos and Javier Báez faced off as brothers-in-law during the 2019 All-Star Game. And brothers-in-law Willi Castro and Amed Rosario shared the AL Central for a few seasons. Manny Machado and the now-retired Yonder Alonso -- both plenty familiar to Padres fans -- are also brothers-in-law.
According to the Ilyo Newspaper, some of Lee’s teammates with the Heroes shared with him following a matchup with LG that his mother had been seen in the stands clapping both for his hits and for Go’s pitching -- hardly stopping her applause throughout the ninth inning as her boys squared off on the diamond.Lee and Go won’t need to wait long to seek bragging rights during the first Spring Training matchup between the Giants and Padres early in the Cactus League schedule on March 2.After the Padres open their regular season in Seoul against the Dodgers from March 20-21, their first regularly scheduled games of the ‘24 campaign will come in a four-game series against the Giants at Petco Park from March 28-31.
It’ll be a family affair as the Korean baseball community continues to expand its international influence through two of its highest-profile sons. (DH Park - MLB.com - Jan 15, 2024)
TRANSACTIONS
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Dec. 12, 2023: The Giants agreed with South Korean outfielder Jung Hoo Lee on a six-year, $113 million deal with an opt-out after four years. If he stays in San Francisco for the entire contract, the Giants will also owe the Heroes an $18.8 million posting fee, bringing their total outlay to nearly $132 million.