Who’s better: Khalil Greene or Ha-Seong Kim?

For some reason this morning a question popped into my head. Who’s the better player: Ha-Seong Kim or Khalil Greene? Both are or were known for their spectacular defense at shortstop and are loved by Padres fans.

It’s hard to find a real answer to this question because Greene obviously has already played his entire Padres career while Kim is in the middle of his. Therefore, I felt like the fairest thing to do was to look at Kim’s age 25 and 26 seasons and compare them to Greene’s age 25 and 26 seasons.

Some could say it isn’t fair to judge Kim’s first two seasons with Greene’s third and fourth seasons but Greene appeared in just 20 games in his rookie season, which would mean I’d be comparing a significantly smaller two year sample size to Kim.

Here is how they stack up (who leads in each stat is in bold):

Ha-Seong Kim’s Age 25 and 26 seasons (2021 and 2022): 267 G, 4.2 fWAR, 4.2 dWAR, .235 AVG, .306 OBP, .372 SLG, .679 OPS, 95 OPS+, 19 HR, 93 RBI

Khalil Greene’s Age 25 and 26 seasons (2005 and 2006): 242 G, 3.9 fWAR, 0.8 dWAR, .248 AVG, .308 OBP, .429 SLG, .737 OPS, 97 OPS+, 30 HR, 125 RBI

If we’re just comparing their age 25 and 26 seasons, Greene probably has the edge but I’m sure some still have an argument for Kim, as he led in fWAR and dWAR. What do you think?