Getting to know Hao-Yu Lee, the newest Detroit Tigers prospect

Lee is the best of the recent contingent, a well-rounded, bat-first second base prospect who is coming off of a first full professional season during which he slashed .284/.386/.438 with nine home runs in 350 plate appearances, with the bulk of his games coming with Low-A Clearwater.
Lee is a plate-crowding bucket strider looking to pull. His hands have exciting life, and he generates authoritative pull power for a such a young hitter. His track record of high-contact hitting dates back to his amateur days and has continued as a pro, where his contact rates (83% in-zone, 75% overall) were close to big league average even though his swing looks like it’s compromising his plate coverage. Whether such a pull-oriented approach to contact will be sustainable or leave Lee vulnerable on the outer half of the plate against upper-level arms we just won’t know until he faces them. For now, his contact and chase rates are a better-than-average mix.
Lee’s a thicker guy and doesn’t have deep-career power projection, but it’s reasonable to expect to see an uptick in 2023 as he gets further away from that fracture, and eyeball reports from the Carpenter Complex suggest that’s the case. Even though his body is maxed, Lee is only 20 and might come into another half grade of pop just through maturity. For a middle infielder, an average (or slightly above) hit and power combination would profile in any everyday role. Lee has played shortstop, second and third base. Especially with the death of the shift, it’s much more likely that an athlete with his build ends up at third base. His range already isn’t the best, but he bends well and has above-average hands and actions. Lee is young enough that it’s possible he may yet cut some weight to give himself a better chance of playing a more complete second base, the position where his bat has the best chance of profiling in an everyday role.

Signed in June 2021 out of Taiwan for $570,000 at age 18, Lee didn’t waste any time in making a strong first impression. His nine-game debut in the Rookie-level Florida Complex League that summer, in addition to his instructs play that fall, had the Phillies thinking they might have an even better player than they thought when they signed him. He did nothing to dampen that excitement during a first full season in which he reached High-A, with only a broken hand slowing him down at all.
The 5-foot-10 infielder has the chance to be a very good hitter, with a clean swing and an advanced approach at the plate. Lee is a baseball rat who loves to work on his hitting and makes a ton of contact, striking out in just over 19 percent of his 2022 plate appearances while walking 12.3 percent of the time. There’s power in that compact frame and he’s added 10 pounds of muscle to it, which should help him impact the ball even more moving forward.
Lee’s instincts serve him well on the basepaths and defensively. He knows how to steal a base and runs the bases aggressively. He’s played three infield positions thus far and the Phillies plan to continue to have him do so, but he’s probably best suited for second base, with the upside of a big league regular at that spot.