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TORONTO — Linking the Toronto Blue Jays to George Springer and D.J. LeMahieu is an exercise in reality.

An elite centre fielder and a versatile infielder with a high-contact bat are the two biggest needs on the ballclub outside of the rotation, and the interest in those two is verified.

But there are alternatives and contingency plans.

There has to be, especially with the eager-to-spend New York Mets — not to mention the Yankees in LeMahieu’s case — chasing the same two names, ones that landed at Nos. 3 and 4, respectively, on our list of the top 50 free agents available.

The Jays have a similar pitch as those two teams: market-value money, or maybe even a bit above, and a chance to win.

What the Jays can’t offer is the Big Apple, or the certainty that they’ll be playing in their home ballpark in 2021, after spending a year as nomads in Buffalo.

One of the most attractive alternatives to LeMahieu could be Korean infielder Ha-Seong Kim, who is the mysterious wild card of this year’s position-player market.

There’s a chance he could be much more than an alternative for the Jays, but they aren’t tipping their hand publicly with so much yet to happen across baseball.

"On Kim, specifically, I don’t want to get too in the weeds on that, but he’s in that infield mix," Blue Jays assistant GM Joe Sheehan said this week. "The margin of error for a guy who’s been in North America is just smaller — you’re relying less on that translation to a new league. The performance in the KBO has been quite strong, and just looking at players that have come over, he fits into that infield market really well.

"Trying to appropriately account for the margin of error, trying to evaluate those players, it’s not the most precise thing we have in the world, but I think Kim is kind of in that market and there’s a time period on him specifically, just given that posting window."

The allure of Kim is obvious.

Born in 1995, the 5-foot-9, 167-pounder is just entering his prime, an obvious rarity in any free-agent market, and adding a 25-year-old who mixes in nicely age-wise with the rest of the roster on a multi-year deal is an opportunity that doesn’t come around often.

When you add in Kim’s positional versatility and ability to play short, third and maybe even second base, you start to see why teams spent so much time doing background work prior to him being officially posted Monday, opening a 30-day negotiation window.

There are aspects of Kim’s profile giving MLB teams pause.

The first is the terrible track record of KBO hitters transitioning to the big leagues. It’s simply not good. The common problem is hitters in Korea aren’t used to facing the type of velocity major-league arms bring, instead feasting on breaking stuff in the KBO.

Kim, himself, knows it’s a tough transition, one evidenced by former MVP Byung-Ho Park’s failed MLB foray with the Minnesota Twins that saw him bat just .191 across 62 games back in 2016.

"Some of the fans doubted me by saying, ‘Can Kim Ha-Seong do it?’" Kim told the Korea JoongAng Daily earlier this year about making the jump to the major leagues.

"Byung-Ho [Park] told me that not many players can actually do it. He encouraged me by telling me that I should give it a try if I can get that chance, and that helped me gain confidence. Even if it’s not an easy path, I’m the one going down that path, so I’m going to care less about [the negative comments] and go my own way."

There’s simply no arguing Kim’s production with the Kiwoom Heroes.

This past season, as a 24-year-old some five years under the average age of the league, Kim hit 30 home runs, swiped 23 bags, walked more than he struck out, and slashed .306/.397/.523.

Impressive, no doubt, but the perception changes when you consider MLB front offices consider the KBO to be somewhere between the level of Double-A and Triple-A.

That would make Kim more of a prospect than a plug-and-play major-league infielder, meaning there could be an adjustment period, one that many Korean hitters before him could never work their way past.

Kim is a player many think could buck that trend, and the ZiPS projections laid out by Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs have the infielder slashing .274/.343/.477 with 23 homers and 17 steals as a major leaguer next year, posting a 3.8 fWAR value that would have any team giddy to add him for the $40-plus million he’s expected to command.

That type of production looks more like a $100-million asset.

Social media reports of Kim dining with Jays star Hyun-Jin Ryu stirred the pot this week, but the story was more of a young player trying to gain knowledge of the MLB process from Korea’s biggest star, rather than a concerted effort to woo the 25-year-old.

"I don’t want to get into specific players, but Ryu’s really good," Sheehan said with a slight grin.

That being said, however, the Ryu factor could be a big one.

Investing in the Asian market is something this Jays front office regime has done more and more lately, culminating in the signings of Ryu and Japanese right-hander Shun Yamaguchi last December.

A year later, they may be trying to invest once again.​