I admit to being captivated by the offseason baseball free agent chase/market. I worry less about the dollars involved especially as my Cubs operate like a smaller market team with middling aspirations. As I’ll mention in a future post, there a couple surprises who appear to be playing above their heads.

The World Champion Dodgers recently resigned slugger, Teoscar Hernandez to a 3-year $66 million contract. More surprisingly, they inked Korean infielder, Hyeseong Kim to a 3-year $12.5 million deal. Nationally, this deal has gone under the radar as I hadn’t seen any stories about Kim being wooed by any teams leading up to this deal.

Retaining Teoscar is all about maintaining the status quo especially after the Mets signed Juan Soto. After reading a couple different accounts of the Kim deal, the Dodgers either see him as an upgrade over Gavin Lux, or as a better utility option. I’d argue that if Kim is as good as his career numbers (.304/.384) in 8 seasons in Korea, and a 2024 slash of .326/.383/.458 and 11 homers and 30 SB then he would be an upgrade for 15 teams. Editor’s note: Nobody has any idea how any of those numbers and his particular skill set will translate to MLB. I’ll be curious to hear if any other teams expressed interest and what attracted him to LA given that there isn’t a clear path to 600 AB’s.

Are the Dodgers the only team so rife with talented players who can take a chance on improving their team at a cost of $12.5 million?