I Wish I Knew How to Quit Choo

Shin-Soo Choo is no longer elite. He used to be, though. Back in 2009-2010, he put up a pair of excellent .300, 20/20 seasons which yielded a 139 wRC+, good enough for 11th in baseball. Just two years ago in a much tougher scoring environment across the league, he hit .285 and went 20/20 yielding a 151 wRC+ (9th-best). The move to Texas wasn’t really an upgrade in park, but it didn’t project to really hurt him, either. After all, his best work came in Cleveland which is hardly known as a hitter-friendly ballpark (these days it plays plus for LHB, though not overwhelmingly so).

Injuries marred his debut season in Texas resulting in an uninspiring effort that saw him hit 13 homers with a .242 AVG, .714 OPS, and just three stolen bases (in seven attempts) in 123 games. Both the ankle and elbow injuries that nagged him throughout the season required surgery and so there was a reasonable expectation of health for Choo coming into the season. His 2014 campaign offered a discount as he sank to the 51st outfielder off the board this draft season. Given the wretched first month to his season, it’s hard not to wonder if either of last year’s injuries or perhaps a new one has cropped up for Choo.

He’s toting a brutal .151/.267/.315 line with just two homers, nine RBIs, and zero stolen bases. The strikeout rate is up and the walk rate is down again, both moving further from the 19% and 16% rates that keyed his 2013 season. A double-digit walk rate has been a staple of his career with a 12% mark in his 4292 plate appearances while the strikeout rate has regularly lived in the high-teens, low-20s area with a career 21% rate. The 26% K rate and 9% BB rate do make his April even tougher to swallow, but we are still in the time of the year when they can change quickly. Two fewer strikeouts and two more walks would have him at 23% and 12%, respectively.

And yet, I can’t quit Choo. I just can’t. Unless we were to learn of a new injury or recurrence of last year’s, then I’m staying the course with Choo and perhaps even considering a buy-low. He has a comically low .180 BABIP that just can’t stay that low. There are some differences in Choo’s batted ball profile, but nothing to explain the fourth-lowest BABIP in baseball. He’s hitting the ball in the air more with a 39% flyball rate, up from 30% a year ago, and it’s all come from his line drive rate (14% this year, 22% career).

He is pulling the ball a good bit more, especially on grounders which likely means a good number of rolled over easy outs to the second baseman or whoever is manning shift hole when he’s being shifted (man the shift hole!). But I don’t think it’s a locked-in-stone change in his game as he’s shown that he can use the middle and opposite fields exceptionally well. Plus his soft-medium-hard contact numbers aren’t necessarily out of whack, either. His soft-hit percentage is up a tick from last year (14%) and three ticks north of his career mark, but his 37% hard-hit rate is also three ticks north of his career mark and seven percentage points than his 2013 mark.

Honestly, he might already be coming out of the slump. He closed April with a .096/.254/.173 line, but he’s opened May with a five-game hitting streak (six hits in all) with five doubles and a bomb. He has just one walk during the mini-run with seven strikeouts, but the power surge is encouraging to be sure. We’ve never seen him as bad as his April so we can’t just point to some similar month back in 2010 and say “see, he worked out of it then!”

But by the same token, the fact that he’s never hit such a nadir and there isn’t an accompanying skills decline leaves room for optimism of sharp improvement in the near future. At 32 and on the heels of a pair of offseason surgeries, we can rule out the 2009-10 and 2013 peaks returning (though I guess it remains a best-case upside), but even his 2011-12 and 2014 averages point to perfectly useful player with a .264/.355/.407 line and 15 HR/15 SB pace per 150 games.

Choo is on just 53% of Yahoo! rosters, 52% of CBS rosters, and 32% of ESPN rosters meaning he has a good chance of being freely available in your league. I would look for a way to exploit that and aim to pick him up. Maybe you reserve him until you’re more comfortable starting him in some of your shallower mixed leagues, but like I said, he already appears to be pulling out of this slump a bit with his last five games.

I think his stock is so low on the fantasy landscape at large that you could probably parlay one of the fast starters into Choo. Names like Adam Lind, D.J. LeMahieu, Logan Forsythe, Andre Ethier, Kelly Johnson, Yonder Alonso, Zack Cozart, Chris Young, Angel Pagan, and Adeiny Hechavarria are all ones I’d be willing to deal for Choo. Some of those might not get it done alone, I understand that, but several will so explore the opportunity in your league if you’re looking for a buy-low target.