Ji Hwan Bae is on the move again, signing with the Milwaukee Brewers after the New York Mets let him go less than a week earlier. The switch gives Bae a new landing spot before he ever appeared in an MLB game for the Mets.
The timing is what makes this signing worth watching now. The Mets had claimed Bae off waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates in November, then cut him loose before he reached the major league roster. He spent that stretch in Triple-A Syracuse, where he hit.257 with five home runs and 32 RBIs in his first season in the organization.
For the Brewers, the deal adds another option to a club leading the NL Central. For Bae, it is another chance to reset after a career that has already swung through more than one sharp turn.
He originally signed with the Atlanta Braves in September 2017, but MLB voided that contract because of fraudulent negotiations. Reports at the time said he agreed to a $300,000 deal and that the Braves planned to add another $600,000 by shifting money promised to other signees. The KBO then banned him for two years after he skipped its draft to join the Braves organization.
Bae later signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2018 for a reported $1.25 million bonus and made his MLB debut in 2022. But even that path was interrupted. In May 2018, he was accused of slapping, choking and kicking his ex-girlfriend in 2017 on New Year’s Eve, and he left the Pirates organization to return to Korea while the legal matter was handled. He was convicted of assault in Daegu in October 2019 and required to pay a fine of $2 million. MLB later suspended him without pay for 30 games because of the incident.
That history now sits behind a new uniform, but the immediate question is narrower: what does Milwaukee want him to be? The Brewers have not said whether Bae will go straight to the MLB roster or begin elsewhere, leaving his role unsettled even as the transaction itself is clear. For now, the move ends a brief Mets chapter and starts another one before he has time to settle in.
