Padres Gold Glove-winning SS declines mutual option

Padres shortstop Ha-Seong Kim declined his end of an $8M mutual option for the 2025 season, and he’ll now take a $2M buyout and enter free agency, The Athletic’s Dennis Lin reports.  Left-hander Wandy Peralta will be staying in San Diego for at least one more season, as Peralta will pass on his opt-out clause and remain in the four-year, $16.5M deal he signed with the Padres last winter.

Neither decision registers as a surprise. Kim has hit .250/.336/.385 over the past three years for a wRC+ of 106, indicating he has been 6% above league average at the plate in that time. He also stole 72 bases in that stretch and provided above-average defense at shortstop, second base and third base.

His situation is a bit complicated by the fact that he underwent right labrum surgery not too long ago. His return timetable is a bit unclear, but it has been suggested that he will likely miss at least part of the start of the 2025 season.

Even with that injury, it’s understandable that he would walk away from his mutual option at a net $6M price point. Players coming back from injury can often still have notable earning power. After missing an entire season, Michael Conforto secured a two-year, $36M deal from the Giants. After his missed campaign, Rhys Hoskins got two years and $34M from the Brewers. Both players could opt out after one season, though neither eventually did.

The situations aren’t entirely analogous. Conforto and Hoskins were expected to be healthy in the first seasons of their deals, which won’t be the case with Kim. Perhaps that puts his earning power below those two, but it still makes it sensible for him to turn down his option today. Whether he can get a two-year deal with an opt-out or a more straightforward one-year pillow deal, he should get past the $6M he’s leaving on the table today.

As for Peralta, he signed with the Padres last winter on a four-year deal with a $16.5M guarantee and opt-outs after each season. He went on to have a pretty mediocre season despite a respectable 3.99 earned run average. His 52.9% ground ball rate was still above the league average but his worst in a full season since 2019. His strikeout rate fell to 13.6% this year after being in the 18-23% range in the previous five years.

If it weren’t for a reasonably low .233 batting average on balls in play, he would have allowed more runs to score. His 5.46 FIP and 4.57 SIERA disagree on how bad things were under the hood, but both suggest that the ERA is misleading. After that performance, he’ll stick with the Padres and hope for a better season, with the chance of returning to free agency again a year from now.