Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections are a good measure of what to expect from players in the upcoming baseball season. We'll take a look at the Rangers' projections on a position-by-position basis. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Today we'll look at the projections for the Rangers right fielder. Shin-Soo Choo was worse than awful over the first half of the 2015 season before eventually finding himself as a platoon option for Jeff Banister and hitting eighth or ninth in the lineup despite making $14 million. Choo hit .221 over the first half of the season and .343 after the all-star break in what of the best single-player in-season turnarounds in recent memory. In 2016, he'll hope to be closer to that second-half version of himself like he was before the Rangers signed him to a $130 million deal.
Choo: 574 plate appearances, 24 doubles, 2 triples, 15 home runs, 53 RBIs, .264 batting average, .372 on-base percentage, .415 slugging percentage
The big thing with Choo has always been on-base percentage, and until the second half of last season we'd never really seen him at his best in that department. Over the second half, he posted a .455 on-base percentage compared to his .305 mark in the first half of the season. Choo has posted five seasons with a higher on-base than the .375 mark he posted in 2015, but that number is definitely a reasonable one. You'd think if he can post a similar number in 2016, which these projections suggest, it'll be considered a successful campaign for the veteran outfielder.
