In a preseason post on his fantasy baseball site Roto Authority, Tim Dierkes ran through the guys he thought had the best chance at hitting 20 homers and stealing 20 bases in 2009. The list: Hanley Ramirez, Grady Sizemore, Alfonso Soriano, Ian Kinsler, Nate McLouth, Corey Hart, and Brandon Phillips.

Dierkes also suggested a few other guys who had an outside chance at 20/20: Alex Rodriguez, David Wright, Jimmy Rollins, Matt Kemp, Carlos Beltran, Bobby Abreu, Alex Rios, Chris Young, Jayson Werth, Rickie Weeks and Chris Dickerson.

Dierkes is a big believer in these 20/20 players. He stacks his teams with as many of these guys as possible. I’ve borrowed his approach this season and my team is in first place, after years of never finishing higher than seventh (out of 12).

But nowhere on Dierkes’ list of 20/20 players was Shin-Soo Choo. That’s because nobody expected Choo to steal 20 bases (ZiPS projected him to steal 8, while BP said he’d nab 10). Yet, through 81 games, he’s stolen 13 bags — and he’s yet to be caught.

Shin-Soo Choo will not play for the 2009 AL all-star team, but he should. He’s on pace to steal 26 bases, hit 24 homers, post an OBP above .400 and rack up 100 runs and RBIs. His defense isn’t great, but it’s not nearly bad enough to overshadow his outstanding offensive output.

Before this season started, people wondered if Choo’s 14 homers in 94 games in 2008 was a fluke. Now we know — it wasn’t. In fact, it was only a small part of the overall picture. So why isn’t Choo getting any love from Joe Madden or anyone else? For one, he plays for the last place Indians. Also, it’s hard to remember where to put the hyphen in his name.

But don’t worry, Choo will get his love. In January and February, when fantasy baseball nerds are getting ready for their leagues’ anual drafts, they’ll sort through the stats and come to the inevitable conclusion that Choo is a lot more than just a home run hitter. He’s a base-stealing, walk-taking, RBI and run-scoring machine.

Well that’s something I’d never seen… In last night’s 10th inning victory over the Royals, the Indians’ Shin-Soo Choo came up to the plate with no outs and runners on first and second. And then, that happened:

I’m sure that pretty soon MLB will take the video down so for those of you late-comers, here’s the deal. Choo lines a shot over the mound into centerfield where a flock of gulls (it is a flock, right?) were just hanging out beyond the infield dirt. Before Royals CFer Coco Crisp could get to the ball, it strikes one of these mellow, “you know, just chillin’” gulls and deflects past Crisp to score the winning run.

Apparently, the Indians still have good karma left in them, despite Chief Wahoo’s mug.

I should also note that the bird was fine. It was stunned briefly and then flew away into that Cleveland night…

Before the 2007 season began, it wasn’t all that difficult to see that the Indians would be a team that needed to be reckoned with. Despite an unimpressive 78-win season the year before, this was the team whose run differential was a plus 88. They were better than their record had shown. And they went on to win 96 games without any major additions in 2007.

Flash forward to November 2008. The Indians had once again underplayed their run differential to the tune of a .500 record despite scoring 805 runs against 761 runs given up. But things are different. C.C. Sabathia is gone. Travis Hafner looks like a shell of his former self and Victor Martinez’ power disappeared overnight. On the positive end of the spectrum, Grady Sizemore cemented himself as a topflight player and Kelly Shoppach emerged as an offensive threat that made Victor Martinez’s sudden decline easier to swallow. Shin-Soo Choo was no longer just a fun name to recite, but a solid big leaguer who still had notable upside. Not to mention the fact that Cliff Lee surprised everyone and got himself a Cy Young award. With these players, the talent gap between the old guard and the new in Cleveland is not vast at all.

However, they do have areas that require help. For one, it’s actually rather amazing that the Indians scored as many runs as they did with so little production coming from the conventional power positions. The Indians had Ryan Garko and Casey Blake (before he went to LA) at first and third, with Ben Francisco and Franklin Gutierrez in left and right, plus Hafner DHing. Upgrading these positions offensively would not be that difficult under ordinary circumstances. But if you take a look at the first base options on the free agent market, the names do not inspire much confidence aside from Mark Teixeira — and the third basemen are worse. With Pronk and his contract entrenched at the DH spot, signing players not named Teixeira would mean a defensive downgrade that may not be worth the offensive upgrade and the financial commitment that would go with it.

And herein lies the problem with having a DH who struggled as badly as Hafner did in 2008. This year’s free agent market is full of all-bat-no-glove type players whose value would be maximized by only utilizing them for offensive purposes – Carlos Delgado, Jason Giambi, Pat Burrell, Frank Thomas, Adam Dunn, Manny Ramirez, etc. With his contract (guaranteed $51.75MM over the next four years), a team like the Indians, whose payroll hasn’t hit $80MM per year since 2001 (and is often well below that mark) do not have much choice but to keep giving Pronk a shot. Yes, he was injured for much of 2008 and certainly, his poor performance can partly be attributed to it. But his 2007 season wasn’t very good either and players like Hafner age quickly. Long story short, I don’t think we’ll ever see him perform at his previous levels ever again. Only a repeat of his 2007 campaign would be a realistic goal.

Moving on to other topics, there’s been talk of moving Jhonny Peralta to third base which doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. But this would obviously depend on who would replace him at short. And Peralta’s bat profiles as average at the hot corner and doesn’t do anything to improve their lineup power. Unless the Tribe shell out the money to bring in Rafael Furcal, it’s probably best to keep Peralta at short for the time being.

On the pitching side, players who have as big a statistical leap as Cliff Lee had last season tend to come back down to earth – not that his “earth” is all that bad. As long as his low walk total wasn’t a total fluke, Lee should remain a very good player. And to counteract this drop, Fausto Carmona can be expected to be better. No one had foreseen Carmona’s performance in 2007. By the same token, no one foresaw such a poor follow-up year. The real Fausto Carmona should be somewhere in the middle, which still makes him an above-average pitcher. The Tribe can also expect the return of Jake Westbrook from Tommy John surgery sometime in the summer and he should be a positive addition to the rotation. In the meantime, rookie Scott Lewis (who made his debut in September) should get the chance to earn a full time spot along with fellow young arms Aaron Laffey, Anthony Reyes, and Jeremy Sowers.

Their bullpen could use some help as well. Currently, their best relievers are Rafael Perez and Jensen Lewis. In addition, top prospect Adam Miller is expected to be on an innings-limit making him a reliever for most if not all of 2009. And while he had a terrible season, Rafael Betancourt is a better pitcher than his 2008 numbers indicate. But Perez is the only lefty of the bunch so they could use one more.

But their primary focus should really be to boost the offensive production coming from their corner positions. Ben Francisco, Ryan Gutierrez and Ryan Garko are probably not going to cut it if the Indians want to overtake the White Sox for the division crown. Giving Choo more at-bats would probably be a cheap and worthwhile option. I would also argue that Kelly Shoppach’s value is never going to be higher than it is right now and ought to be shipped out to one of the many teams who’d love an offensive upgrade at the catcher spot in exchange for a viable third baseman (Red Sox perhaps?).

All in all, I like the Indians’ chances in 2009. But much of it is going to rest upon the bats of Hafner and Victor Martinez. If their 2008 season wasn’t a fluke, then much of what they accomplish this offseason will most likely be moot.

- What They Need Index -

We’ve all watched a game in which a player with a peculiar sounding name will hear the boo birds upon coming to the plate. Red Sox 1B Kevin Youkilis? “yooooooouuuuuuu”; White Sox 2B Tadahito “Gooch” Iguchi? “Goooooo”; Aaron Boone? “Booooo” – wait a minute… – at any rate, you get my point.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to baseball, it happens in stadiums across the American landscape. And even though you’d imagine Indian’s Outfielder Shin-Soo Choo getting the boo-as-cheer treatment because of his name; sadly that wasn’t the case last week.

Before being called up on Tuesday, Choo did hear the boos. But what’s disturbing is that he wasn’t rained on with jeers for his performance, or because of a heated rivalry between AAA Buffalo (the Indians’ affiliate) and the Toledo Mud Hens. He heard them for a different, but very wrong reason:

Outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, promoted to the big leagues Monday by the Indians, has heard boos before.

Last week, the boos took on a disturbing tone. When Class AAA Buffalo, the Indians’ top farm club, played in Toledo, fans apparently associated him with […], the Virginia Tech senior who killed 32 of his schoolmates before killing himself April 16.

“Some fans said bad things,” said Choo before Monday’s game. “It’s pretty close to my name. My name is spelled Choo, and his name is […].”

How unfortunate that this kind of situation presents itself; but I’d say it takes something like this to expose where society is most vulnerable. It’s a matter of asking oneself: “why would a minor leaguer have anything to do with the individual that perpetrated the Virginia Tech campus last week?”

Nothing. So why boo him? Why harass him?

For the Indians, though, it wasn’t the only connection to the shootings.

Steven Bumbry, son of former Indians coach Al Bumbry, is a freshman outfielder at Virginia Tech.

“About a half hour after the news about the shootings was televised, I called Steven to see how he was doing,” said Johnny Goryl, advisor to the Indians player development department. “He was in the dorm right next to the one where the first two students were killed. I told him to stay in his room until he heard from school officials.”

At this point, I think, any discussions about the VT shootings should be grounded on what can be done to move on. Booing and harassing a player because he has a Korean sounding name, is not one of them.