The KT Wiz of the Korea Baseball Organization announced the signing of outfielder Sam Hilliard to a $1MM contract. He’ll collect a $300K signing bonus and make a $700K salary. Hilliard elected minor league free agency after being outrighted by Colorado in July.
A lefty-hitting outfielder, Hilliard has played parts of seven seasons in the big leagues. Most of that time has been with the Rockies, for whom he logged separate stats sandwiching a 2023 season in Atlanta. Hilliard has plus raw power and speed but has never made enough contact to stick as a regular. He has yet to appear in more than half a team’s games or top 238 plate appearances in an MLB season.
The 31-year-old Hilliard is a lifetime .218/.298/.437 hitter in a little under 1000 career trips to the plate. The former 15th-round draftee has punched out in 34.3% of those plate appearances. He’s a much more accomplished Triple-A performer. Hilliard has a .275/.356/.563 slash over six Triple-A campaigns. That includes a .288/.367/.565 showing with 17 homers in 91 games for Colorado’s top affiliate this past season.
This is Hilliard’s first trip to Asia, where he’ll take home a stronger salary than he’d have received on a minor league deal. Hilliard completes the Wiz’s trio of allotted foreign-born players. The team signed right-handers Matt Sauer and Caleb Boushley earlier in the offseason.
What in the name of Sam Hill…iard!
A KBO team will pay him as much as Colorado did last year? International leagues have come a long way lately. Meanwhile Manfred can’t even schedule all the international games the MLBPA agreed to in the CBA. The NFL & NBA are doing great at expanding their sports and have worst products in my opinion. What does Robbie even do all day?
KBO has had a foreign player cap of 1 million salary since 2019. With having a 3 foreign player limit (besides injury replacements) they can afford to pay quad a players well. Plus some KBO players make like $30k/year so it offsets it a bit.