The baseball world is abuzz with information about the Rangers' signing of OF Shin-soo Choo.
One report even said that his signing puts Texas on top of the American League.
And if he can play close to the way he did this year in the National League, Choo could be enough to make the Rangers favorites. Definitely a playoff team, if their pitching holds up.
I don't look at the benefit of this signing so much as having Choo replace A) David Murphy, B) Nelson Cruz, C) Craig Gentry, D) Jeff Baker, E) Engel Beltre, F) All of the above in the outfield as having him replace Ian Kinsler at the top of the lineup.
Now Kinsler wasn't the worst leadoff man in the majors. His 2013 on-base percentage was .344 -- not All-Star territory, but above a replacement player.
Don't take this as thinking I don't like what Kinsler can bring to a team -- I've already endorsed Texas' acquiring 1B Prince Fielder in trade for Kinsler -- but it seems reasonable that in Fielder and Choo, the Rangers are better off than if they'd kept Kinsler and Cruz.
Choo's on-base percentage for Cincinnati this year was .423. That's 80 percentage points above Kinsler's, or over 600 plate appearances an additional 48 times on base. About once every three games. And it's not unreasonable to think that those times on base could translate to 10 or even 20 more runs. In fact, in 98 more plate appearances than Kinsler, Choo scored 22 more runs. We can give Kinsler a bit of a pass because of all the games he had the ineffective Murphy batting after him, while Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips were coming up for the Reds.
Beyond the on-base percentage -- and isn't there a beyond with just about every baseball statistic? -- Choo has it all over Kinsler.
Sure, Choo struck out more often: 133 times to 59. In part, that was because Kinsler didn't wait around for three strikes. He drew 51 walks -- a good, near 1:1 ratio -- but Choo took a whopping 112 free passes.
Of course, those walks showed up in the on-base percentage. But even deeper, we can go to a stat listed as GO/AO, ground outs/air outs. It might be because I saw Kinsler play so often, but I can't imagine a player who would pop up more often.
His GO/AO was 0.72. Is that good or bad? you might ask. Of 140 players who qualified for major league batting titles last season, Kinsler was 135th. Choo was 23rd at 1.50, so he was putting the ball on the ground for outs more than twice as often as Kinsler.
Another way to look at it. Kinsler (and Choo) made 400-some outs in 2013. That's roughly 267 outs in the air, which can be at-bats as empty as strikeouts, compared to 133 or so for Choo. But what about sacrifice flies? Fly balls can be valuable. Possibly, but Kinsler had seven sacrifice flies, compared to two by Choo. That still leaves something like 129 more unproductive outs by Kinsler.
Now you're saying, "But ground balls can be unproductive too." True. They also can move runners from first to second, from second to third and even third to home more easily. There is no sacrifice ground out stat to give batters credit for driving in a run, so we don't really know who does that more often. A ground ball is also more likely to result in an error than a ball in the air.
The trump card for ground ball haters in the double play. Certainly, those GO/AO leaders wipe out teammates in doubly damaging double plays more often. True, among the top 10 in GO/AO were three players with 20 or more GIDP: David Freese, Billy Butler and Michael Young. Choo, on the other hand, grounded into just two DPs, and Kinsler seven.
It should be clear then that Choo himself reached base more frequently and most likely did a better job moving his teammates around the bases as well.
So why is this even an issue? Choo will be the greatest thing that ever happened to the Rangers. Where is the downside?
One possible downside is moving back to the American League. This year was Choo's only season in the NL. He had a good lineup with the Reds. Even the improved 2014 lineup in Texas isn't likely to be as good. And check out his K/W (strikeout/walk) ratio in '12, his last as an American League. He struck out 150 times, and walked 73. The 150 Ks aren't even his career high. So it's reasonable to expect some regression in AL parks with AL pitchers.
The improvement in his batting eye is an example of what are described as old-man skills. Another is an increase in the frequency of extra-base hits, and indeed in the last two seasons, Choo has had a little over 10% more doubles than in his first two years in the majors. A third is a logical decline in base stealing.
But, hey! Choo has had just five full seasons in the majors, so he can improve. He's what? 27? 28? Try 31. The records show that he's just 31 days younger than Kinsler. But my policy is to add a year to the age of every player with a birth certificate from a foreign country. It's just as likely that Choo is 11 months older.
Thus, it's no surprise that he is exhibiting old-man skills. His 20 stolen bases this year were within 10% of his best full season, but his 11 times caught stealing were four more than in any other season. That's why I'm not expecting 20 this year. By the way, Kinsler's base-stealing rate declined from 30-for-34 in 2011, to 21-for-30 last season and 15-for-26 this year.
Another of my rules of thumb is that I consider the age-31 season as a plateau, before a player's decline really kicks in but not necessary a drop from the level he established during ages 27-30.
That's the real rub in signing Choo for seven years and $130 million.
In 2014, he can be very close to the player he was this year. A 5% decline, or maybe even 10%, would be better than what Texas got from Kinsler in 2013.
Similarly, 2015 might not be much worse.
But with five more years with an average of $18 million-$19 million, how can he bring the return on investment a major league team would like? Seems unlikely.
Another limiting factor is the eyeball test. Choo has never been a Slim Jim, but he looked pudgier this year than before. Will his conditioning improve now that he'll be set for life?
That conditioning could be an issue within a few years. Fielder is two years younger, but his days as a full-time DH seem closer than Choo's. And if Choo becomes too immobile to play in the outfield, how would he DH? The Rangers would have to pay a bunch of money to help pay his contract as a DH somewhere else if he is traded.
Perhaps all Texas' management wants is a better path to winning its first World Series. Choo could help deliver that. But by the time his contract ends and he's 38 (or 39), that championship would be a distant memory. It won't help that Adrian Beltre, Geovany Soto, probably Fielder and possibly Yu Darvish would also be long gone by then. Which again is why the Rangers are making these moves NOW.
Good short-term move, but far too long a contract for an aging player.
That's what I said about the Mariners and the Robinson Cano signing, except that I can't envision how Seattle was only one player away from winning in '14.
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Expending these words and the time to research the information led to a couple of side issues.
1. Another benefit too the Choo signing is that it increases the likelihood that the Rangers could trade Engel Beltre while he still has some value and before he's overexposed. I think his defense is overrated, he won't hit lefties and he still has a lot of growing up to do before he could be considered a reliable player and teammate. A team needing speed and outfield defense, distracted by some empty batting averages on Beltre's resume, could cough up a helpful reliever or even a potential bottom-of-the-rotation starter in return.
2. My analysis of the Cano and Choo signings points out that Seattle and Texas don't seem overly concerned about outfield defense down the road, but willing to entrust it to players with declining mobility.
Perhaps it's a coincidence, but I noticed that the last seven players on the 2013 GO/AO list were from AL West teams: Houston's Chris Carter, Kinsler, Seattle's Justin Smoak and Kurt Seager, and Oakland's Yoenis Cespedes, Jed Lowrie and Brandon Moss. Perhaps the NL West didn't get the memo saying that baseball was moving away from sluggers toward pitching and defense. Or perhaps the Angels took the memos out of the other teams' mailboxes. Or, given the fact that the Athletics -- a well managed team attuned to sabremetrics and making very few mistakes these days -- put three of those seven players in important offensive roles, once again they may know more than we (I) do.
I also like Seager. You probably still can hear reverberations from his line drives at Rangers Ballpark.
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