Early returns show the Giants’ biggest bet of the offseason is paying off.
Sports is tension + fun = entertainment and for the last couple of years the San Francisco Giants have lacked the “plus fun” part. Their offseason looked a lot like the last offseason where they made a lot of moves to shore up a roster that needed shoring up — save Jung Hoo Lee who, and this is no exaggeration, might already have saved the season.
I cannot recall the last time I was this excited about the Giants and it’s all thanks to that Jung Hoo Lee fanclub that showed up and sat behind home plate last night.
The JHL fan club is here in full force pic.twitter.com/pZ2Nb2OCbh
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 19, 2024
Oracle Park sat mostly empty, and yet it was alive. The fan club was loud and the rest of the crowd shad a Thirsty Thursday vibe. Jung Hoo is for the children?
Maybe it’s a flaw in human biology that we become attracted to charismatic personalities and look to deify our betters, but then again, very few people can play Major League Baseball at an elite level, so, maybe the critique of the human condition is unwarranted. Jung Hoo Lee won’t save us from our dreary lives, but he might give us a break.
And, to me, he’s not especially charismatic in the way that he plays, he just does what he does very well. It’s very hard to make contact with major league pitching and he’s doing it with ease. Currently, he’s 7th in MLB in contact rate (89.6%) with a breakdown that’s pretty good for a player with just 86 major league plate appearances.
With 55.3% of the pitches he’s seen having been in the strike zone (per Statcast), he’s made contact 91.2% of the time he’s swung at those pitches (28th in MLB). He’s also pretty selective with his swing, letting ‘er rip just 40.2% of the time so far (19th in MLB).
To contextualize that a bit more: Mookie Betts swings just 35% of the time and Juan Soto’s at 35.4% of the time, and you can figure that’s because they see a lot of pitches outside the strike zone, too — but it goes to show that Lee has a good eye. He also has a good swing, though, because although he only swings outside the zone 24.5% of the time (66th best in MLB), he makes contact 85.3% of the time, which is 2nd best in MLB behind Luis Arraez (90.2%) and ahead of Yandy Diaz (84.4%).
He’s on a 10-game hitting streak with a line of .349/.378/.395 (.773) over it. That includes 5 multi-hit games. Here’s the list of 25 year olds with 10-game hitting streaks in the San Francisco era:
Jung Hoo Lee, 2024
Travis Ishikawa, 2009
Will Clark, 1989
Chili Davis, 1985
Terry Whitfield, 1978
Ken Reitz, 1976
Chris Speier, 1975
Ed Goodson, 1973
Al Gallagher, 1971
Bobby Bonds, 1971
Jim Ray Hart, 1967
Felipe Alou, 1960
Jackie Brandt, 1959
Willie McCovey had a 24-game streak in 1963 (34 hits including 15 home runs and a .347/.402/.837 slash in 107 PA) and Pablo Sandoval had 27 total hits over 20 games from April 4-27, 2012. The total list is 64 names long and there are 42 ahead of Lee (with 11+ games) — and that’s just 25 only. If you add in under-25 year olds (that is, 10+-game hitting streaks for all Giants in team history, 25 and under), the list expands to 249 total.
Again, just 86 plate appearances into his major league season, so it’s worth ignorning (for the moment) the 1 walk against 5 strikeouts along with the 1 RBI, 1 XBH (a double), and 0 home runs reality. It’s created this fun Statcast page:
He’s not in rarified air, but he’s doing well, and for a team that has been short on excitement and young players developing, this is a great thing to see. We’re watching him figure it out in realtime. All that he’s done has supported what we’ve been told the Giants saw as they scouted him. Now, can his actual ceiling reach the team’s imagined — I-I mean projected — ceiling? Time will tell. For now, let’s bask in the present.
The Giants committed to a 25-year old centerfielder with elite contact skills and whose national origin might bring added interest to the team. Even if you’re concerned about the rest of the Giants (and even if you’re not!), Jung Hoo Lee promised an added dimension to the team this season and in the first 20 games of the season, he’s delivered exactly that.