Milwaukee Brewers Rumors: Crew “Interested” in Shin-Soo Choo at 1B

David Stearns and the Milwaukee Brewers must be trying to make up for the lack of rumors and activity for much of the offseason because we’ve seen the Crew linked to several different players over the last week and a half. And the latest rumor is that the Brewers are “interested” in former Texas Rangers’ outfielder and DH, Shin-Soo Choo, according to FanSided’s Robert Murray.

As I’m sure you noticed, Murray mentions that the Brewers are interested in Choo as a first baseman, despite him being an outfielder and DH as I mentioned above, and the fact that Keston Hiura is now going to be Milwaukee’s primary first baseman with the addition of Kolten Wong. But I’ll get to this shortly; first, let’s take a look at Choo’s performance in recent years.

Choo has spent the last seven seasons with the Rangers after signing a lucrative deal prior to the 2014 season. During that span, he slashed .260/.363/.429 for a .792 OPS and an OPS+ of 109.

2020 was a down year for Choo at the plate; however, that was the case for many big leaguers in what was just a very odd and shortened season. In 2019, Choo was much closer to his career averages, slashing .265/.371/.455 with a .826 OPS, 24 home runs, and an OPS+ of 109.

On top of that, according to Baseball Savant, Choo’s exit velocity that season ranked in the 92nd percentile, and his hard-hit rate was in the 95th percentile.

Similarly to Wong, Choo has a solid but not great bat, but where he excels is getting on base. Over his big league career, which began in 2005, Choo has a career on-base percentage of a whopping .377. His walk rate during his career is an excellent 12.1 percent as well, according to Fangraphs.

Defensively, by Statcast’s Outs Above Average (OAA) metric, Choo has been a below-average to well below-average defender, finishing between -2 OAA all the way to -12 OAA at various points in his career. By defensive runs saved, Choo is -68 since 2005.

So what about first base? Well, Choo has no big league experience at that position, but as we’ve seen from Stearns in the past, that hasn’t exactly stopped him either.

The issue, in terms of playing time, is that Wong and Hiuara are every day players, and Choo has been as well in Texas–averaging 149 games per year from 2017 to 2019. We know that Wong is going to start at second, so perhaps Choo and Hiura could platoon with Choo being a lefty and Hiura a righty.

But again, we run into another issue. Both Hiura and Choo have career OPS’ over .890 against right-handed pitching, but both are below .690 against lefties. This really defeats the purpose of a platoon.

Two other options for Choo include being the left-handed bat off the bench and playing spot outfield duty when needed. Or we could hold out hope that the NL does have the DH in 2021, which would be a perfect fit for Choo.

And if your thought is that the Brewers would acquire the 38-year-old Choo to trade Hiura, as Murray said, that isn’t going to happen.

So I’ve said all of that to say this: if the Milwaukee Brewers did acquire Choo, I’m not really sure how they would make it work. However, I’m also a believer in acquiring as many good players as possible and figuring out the rest later. There’s no such thing as having too many good players.

In addition to Shin-Soo Choo, two other players that the Milwaukee Brewers have been linked to recently and are still available include third baseman Justin Turner and starting pitcher Rich Hill.