Biography

BIOGRAPHY

Ji-hwan Bae was born July 26, 1999, in Daegu, South Korea. He is an infielder in the MLB.

On September 23, 2017, the Atlanta Braves announced the signing of Bae as a free agent. General manager John Coppolella claimed that Bae was the youngest Asian baseball player to sign with the Braves in nearly two decades. By joining the Braves, Bae would have become the second player since Kwon Kwang-min, who signed with the Chicago Cubs in 2015, to leave a South Korean high school directly for professional baseball in the United States. On November 21, 2017, Major League Baseball voided his contract with the Braves as a result of fraudulent contract negotiations. The New York Times reported that, although Bae had agreed to sign for $300,000, the Braves planned to pay him an additional $600,000 by reallocating money promised to other signees. The KBO League barred Bae from signing with any South Korean professional team for two years because he had skipped the KBO's draft to join the Braves organization, where he appeared with Atlanta's Florida Instructional League team. Bae was later signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates for a reported signing bonus of $1.25 million.