Walt Weiss Explains Why Ha-Seong Kim Is Still Searching for His Swing

Atlanta Braves shortstop Ha-Seong Kim signed a one-year, $20 million deal this past December to fix a position that had plagued the franchise since 2024.

Through his first dozen games of 2026, though, the 30-year-old has looked nothing like the player who won a Gold Glove with the San Diego Padres three years ago.

After Wednesday night's 8-0 loss to the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, first-year manager Walt Weiss was asked about where Kim stands right now, and his answer leaned heavily on patience.

"It's just so difficult when you don't have a Spring Training and when you've missed a lot of time the past two years," Weiss said. "This game, these guys make it look really easy, but the game is extremely fast at this level."

Kim came off the injured list on May 11 after having surgery in January to repair a torn tendon in his right middle finger.

The procedure wiped out his entire spring and the first six weeks of the regular season, and it continues a brutal stretch of health problems that goes back to August 2024.

A right shoulder injury shut him down with San Diego that summer, and the labrum surgery that followed kept him sidelined until July 2025 with Tampa Bay.

Between the Rays and the Braves, who claimed him off waivers in September, he appeared in just 48 games all of last year.

The early results in 2026 reflect all of that missed time.

Through 12 games, Kim is batting .105 with no extra-base hits, two RBI and three errors, and his OPS+ sits at 5.

That same player slashed .260/.351/.398 with 17 home runs and 38 stolen bases across 152 games for the Padres in 2023, a season that earned him his first Gold Glove.

The gap between those two versions is massive.

Weiss was pretty blunt about the challenge after Wednesday's shutout, but he also stressed that getting back to big league speed takes longer than most people think.

"A rehab assignment does no justice to how fast this game is up here," Weiss said. "So it just takes time to get caught up."

Kim hit .286 with a solid walk rate during a nine-game rehab stint between Double-A Columbus and Triple-A Gwinnett before being activated.

Those numbers looked encouraging on paper, but they clearly haven't carried over to facing big league pitching night after night.

Where this gets easier to stomach is the Braves' overall position.

Atlanta sits at 37-19 with a comfortable lead in the National League East, and Mauricio Dubon has filled in well at shortstop whenever Kim sits.

The offense ranks among the top three in baseball in runs scored, so there is room to let him work through this.

A team with championship expectations will need more from the $20 million shortstop eventually. How soon Kim can get there is the part nobody has an answer for.