Post by soxfanatic on Dec 19, 2022 8:40:12 GMT -5
Thinking about starting a thread for 2024 position players:
Jung-Hoo Lee (24 yr. old outfielder)
Fangraphs:
Like Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Lee has important baseball lineage and seemed pre-ordained for stardom in Korea. His father, Jong-beom Lee, was a five-tool superstar pro ballplayer who stole as many as 84 bases in a single 124-game KBO season, and had several 20-plus homer years as well (go look at his 1997 line on Baseball Reference). Jung-hoo is more precocious than the elder Lee and is the first player in KBO history to go straight from high school to the top level of play. Since arriving in the league at age 19, Lee has hit for elite rates of contact and more recently has hit for power. His early-career pop may have been masked by injury/recovery from shoulder surgery, but he clubbed 23 homers and about 60 extra-base hits in his 2022 MVP campaign. Lee has had more walks than strikeouts the last three years, culminating in a 2022 season in which he K'd at just a 5% clip, easily a career best and comfortably the best in all of the KBO (no other hitter with at least 100 PAs struck out less than 8% of the time). Lee wields one of the sweetest looking swings on the planet and is especially good at flattening his bat path to crush fastballs at the top of the zone. There are still a couple yellow flags here to go along with all the good stuff. Lee's groundball rate (nearly 60%) and performance against big velocity (per Synergy, he faced 109 pitches of 93 mph or greater and slashed .226/.273/.419 against them) indicate risk with MLB transition, even if it's just risk that he doesn't actualize power in games. It's why there's no FV change here even after his massive 2022, a hedge against this risk even though Lee is a very exciting player. Because he started his KBO career so young, Lee will be able to become an MLB free agent after his age 24 season in 2023 and he might be one of next offseason's most sought-after players.
Jung-Hoo Lee (24 yr. old outfielder)
Fangraphs:
Like Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Lee has important baseball lineage and seemed pre-ordained for stardom in Korea. His father, Jong-beom Lee, was a five-tool superstar pro ballplayer who stole as many as 84 bases in a single 124-game KBO season, and had several 20-plus homer years as well (go look at his 1997 line on Baseball Reference). Jung-hoo is more precocious than the elder Lee and is the first player in KBO history to go straight from high school to the top level of play. Since arriving in the league at age 19, Lee has hit for elite rates of contact and more recently has hit for power. His early-career pop may have been masked by injury/recovery from shoulder surgery, but he clubbed 23 homers and about 60 extra-base hits in his 2022 MVP campaign. Lee has had more walks than strikeouts the last three years, culminating in a 2022 season in which he K'd at just a 5% clip, easily a career best and comfortably the best in all of the KBO (no other hitter with at least 100 PAs struck out less than 8% of the time). Lee wields one of the sweetest looking swings on the planet and is especially good at flattening his bat path to crush fastballs at the top of the zone. There are still a couple yellow flags here to go along with all the good stuff. Lee's groundball rate (nearly 60%) and performance against big velocity (per Synergy, he faced 109 pitches of 93 mph or greater and slashed .226/.273/.419 against them) indicate risk with MLB transition, even if it's just risk that he doesn't actualize power in games. It's why there's no FV change here even after his massive 2022, a hedge against this risk even though Lee is a very exciting player. Because he started his KBO career so young, Lee will be able to become an MLB free agent after his age 24 season in 2023 and he might be one of next offseason's most sought-after players.
