San Francisco Giants center fielder Jung Hoo Lee has played in 13 major-league games. He has swung the bat 73 times.

He has swung at 98 mph fastballs that were far firmer than anything he faced while starring for the Kiwoom Heroes in the Korea Baseball Organization. He has swung at two-strike curveballs and sweepers and whatever else can be cooked up these days in bespoke pitching labs. He has swung against foreign backdrops in stadiums that face the opposite way from what he’s accustomed to seeing in Korea. He has swung against pitchers he’s never faced before, and against pitch shapes he’s never seen before.

The bat has left his shoulder 73 times. He has swung and missed at just five of those pitches. One of those was a foul tip.

This is why the San Francisco Giants made a $113 million commitment, plus an additional posting fee of $18.25 million to his KBO club, when they signed Lee to a six-year contract in December. They loved his supernatural contact skills. They loved his strike-zone asceticism. They loved his ability to not merely put the ball in play, but to make reliably hard contact. Lee hasn’t been gliding his bat through the zone to avoid swinging and missing. His average exit velocity of 92.3 mph puts him in the 84th percentile among big-league hitters. He is getting off his best swings against the best stuff in the world and he’s making reliably crisp contact.

But ask some of Lee’s new Giants teammates about his hard contact in these first two weeks and their praise isn’t limited to the skills he’s demonstrating in the batter’s box. There’s another kind of hard contact that’s made an impression on them.

“He’s willing to run into a wall in center field,” right fielder Mike Yastrzemski said. “He’s done it a few times already. He plays the game hard. He cares a lot. He really wants us to win. That’s probably all anyone needs to know about his character.”

Lee crashed into the wall at Dodger Stadium on April 1 while chasing down a deep drive from Mookie Betts. Lee had another brusque encounter with the wall in San Francisco when his shoulder bashed into it as he attempted to make a leaping catch of a double off the bat of the Padres’ Jake Cronenworth. Both times, Lee dusted himself off without a visit from the training staff.

“Jung Hoo wants everyone to know that he’s more worried about the wall than he is about himself.”@PavlovicNBCS provides an update on Jung Hoo Lee after his run-in with the outfield wall last night ⬇ pic.twitter.com/k817Rv1RJf

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 3, 2024

Then in Tuesday’s home loss to the Washington Nationals, Lee lost a ball in the sun to open the door to a four-run inning.

“He was, like, really, really eager to get help on how to play the sun here and how to play the wind here,” Yastrzemski said. “It can be tough. Unless you’re the only person in the world who can stare into the sun without blinding yourself, there’s nothing you can do. Just make your read early and trust it.”

Lee, 25, was just 18 when he debuted with Kiwoom. The Heroes play in a domed stadium. Nearly every other KBO park is outdoors, but in all of them, the batter is looking south. The sun is always behind the infielders. In nearly every major-league stadium, the batter is looking north or east. It requires a literal reorientation for an outfielder to come from Kiwoom to San Francisco.

There have been adjustments at the plate as well. After Lee batted .160 without an extra-base hit over a two-series span that included three games at Dodger Stadium and the first three home games against the San Diego Padres, Giants manager Bob Melvin asked the left-handed hitter to work on letting the ball travel a little deeper. Lee was hitting too many pull-side groundballs. Some of them were sneaking through because they were hit hard enough. But ideally, the Giants envision Lee as the type of hitter who can put the ball in gaps and use his speed to leg out doubles and triples.

Lee worked on those adjustments in a pregame session on the field Tuesday. He applied it right away. That night, with the Giants trailing by two runs in the ninth, Lee let a 97 mph fastball from the Nats’ Kyle Finnegan travel a bit deeper and chopped a single through the left side.

“He stays on the ball a little longer and he’s able to hit to left field,” Melvin said. “He’s been able to make adjustments and it’s been seamless. He understands baseball. No matter what league you’re playing in, you know what’s important. In situational at-bats, he’s very aware.”

Melvin also loved it when Lee squared to bunt against the Nationals. There is possibly no hitter in the major leagues who could benefit more from getting opposing infielders to play a step or two shallow. When Lee showed bunt, he wasn’t just making a good situational decision. He was investing in his future success.

“He hits the ball hard again and again,” Yastrzemski said. “That’s just who he is. I don’t think people have recognized that because of the ball flight. It’s so pure and he keeps it low. I don’t think people understand how hard that is to do consistently.”

Lee also has been among the most passive hitters in the big leagues thus far, which is understandable. He’s attempting to see as many pitches as possible to help him learn a new league, which has resulted in taking a lot of strikes. Lee’s 38.1 percent swing rate on middle-middle pitches in the strike zone is almost half the league average of 76.1 percent.

But he’s also demonstrated extreme discipline. According to Statcast, out of 45 “chase” or “waste” pitches to Lee, he has swung at just five of them. One of those swings in San Diego was a good piece of situational hitting on a high fastball that resulted in a sacrifice fly.

Here’s the really impressive stuff: Lee has one pure whiff all season when he’s swung at a pitch in the strike zone. Dodgers reliever Ryan Brasier got him to swing through an 0-2 sinker at the top of the zone April 2 in Los Angeles. The location of that pitch, by the way, was too borderline to assume it would’ve been called a strike.

Giants catcher Patrick Bailey has seen enough to feel grateful that Lee is on his side.

“What’s stood out to me is the at-bat quality,” Bailey said. “When you’re trying to pitch to someone like him, it might sound foolish, but you just hope he hits it at somebody. You can’t try to strike him out because he’ll take (a chase pitch) or foul it off and get your pitch count up. That’s what I’m seeing: No matter who he’s facing, whether it’s velo or a lot of spin, he finds a way to get the barrel to it.”

Of course, all of this analysis is a reaction to a two-week sample. But few statistical values stabilize quicker than the quantifiable aspects of swing decisions. Disciplined hitters with zone awareness do not require months to earn their laurels. Those skills tend to apply in windows of all shapes and sizes. So it’s probably not premature to evaluate Lee as a hitter whose plate discipline and contact skills will work against major-league competition.

The deeper question is this: Just how valuable will those skills be? Lee has generated 0.1 bWAR thus far, tied for fifth among Giants hitters, and he’s given that value back on the defensive side. There’s little doubt that this Giants baseball operations group, headed by president Farhan Zaidi, prizes offensive players who make good swing decisions. For instance, they wouldn’t have rushed Wade Meckler to the big leagues last season if they didn’t think those contact skills and zone discipline would translate.

But not all contact is created equal. And for as impressive as Lee has been thus far, the Giants are tied with the Chicago White Sox for the fewest runs scored (four) out of the leadoff spot. Lee isn’t the kind of offensive addition who can carry a lineup all by himself. It might help if he took matters into his own hands a bit more often; Lee hasn’t stolen a base yet and Giants coaches are encouraging him to be more aggressive on the basepaths.

“The way he moves down the line is incredible,” said Giants utilityman Tyler Fitzgerald, who stole the Giants’ first base of the season when he started for Lee on Sunday. “And he’s super young, too. I mean, I feel young and I’m two years older than him. So once he gets comfortable on the basepaths and once he finds that rhythm and that freedom, that’s the biggest thing out there. It’s just being confident and being aggressive. I think once he gets that first one out the way, he’s gonna show it off a lot more. Because I know the team and the coaches want him to. Yeah, he’s just as good a baserunner as I am.”

Lee meets with a half-dozen reporters from Korea almost every day. He hasn’t turned down any requests from the English-speaking media, either. His answers have been like his plate appearances: short and to the point.

“I feel pitchers have a plan when they pitch against me,” Lee said through interpreter Justin Han. “I’m just trying to adjust the best I can. I am at this level and I need to be able to make those adjustments.”

(Photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)