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Shin-Soo Choo had his 2011 cut short with a strained oblique and before that, spent six weeks on the DL with a fractured left thumb. Of course you can throw a DUI in there to boot which seemed to affect his production.
If we give him a mulligan on 2011 (should we? Can we?) then what we have is a .300 hitter with 20 HRs and 20 SBs that might fly a little under the radar. He's currently coming off the board in snake drafts as the 19th or 20th OF picked.
In 2011, Choo missed 71 days due to injury. In 2010, he missed 20 days with an injury to his OTHER thumb. 2009 he was healthy, but in '08 -- he missed 61 days with elbow surgery.
You are going to have to bake the health risk into your evaluations and price on him. Maybe it's fluky, but it is what it is.
When you look at his .300 average between '08 and '10, he hit .300 on the nose every year. xBA says he's not a .300 hitter and that he keeps outperforming on inflated hit rates, but he's posted hit rates between 35% and 38% repeatedly. So if that has an 'off' year then you have a .280 hitter, not a .300 hitter. He's also a guy who posts double-digit walk rates but he does strike out about 25% of the time.
I think the power is good. It's not elite, but it's very good. He only hits about 35% flyballs so it will cap him at probably 25 or so home runs, but he gives you 20% line drives so it's not like he's hitting lots of grounders.
He can run and the Indians let him go about 15-20% of the time. So with health, ~25 SBs are probably fair to expect as well. He's a 6.25 runs created per game kind of guy, so you will get nice counting stats from him as well. All in all, he's a $27 player if healthy.
2012 Projections
575 ABs
.285 BA
24 HRs
92 RBI
79 Runs
22 SBs
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