Camp Sights: Rangers, Choo aim for health, prosperity

Note: Paste BN Sports'Paul White, via car, causeway, plane and rail, will reach every major league camp this spring.

Follow his exploits on Twitter -- @PBJWhite - as he makes his way through the Grapefruit League before he imparts all you didn't know about every team right here.

Today: Texas Rangers

SURPRISE, Ariz. – Shin-Soo Choo was there – for most of it, anyway.

The Rangers right fielder battled through three-quarters of his first season in Texas – more than a whole lot of his teammates – in a season that was a health disaster before the team left spring training and just got worse.

Statistically, it was the 31-year-old Choo's worst in the majors – hardly a way to win fans or influence (positively, at least) people at the beginning of a seven-year, $130 million contract.

Choo won over teammates because he kept showing up. Rangers fans weren't so unanimously forgiving, already frustrated by a string of medical misfortune that began with Jurickson Profar, Geovany Soto and three others on the 60-day DL before Opening Day.

Eventually, Prince Fielder, Mitch Moreland, Yu Darvish, Derek Holland and Matt Harrison saw their seasons significantly shortened.

Amid all that, Choo's own physical issues seemed barely relevant. But he probably never was fully healthy all season.

Right?

"I don't want to say that," Choo says. "It's part of baseball. You play. That's my job, you know. I was still in the lineup."

That's Choo, whose pride and sense of duty rank up there with his baseball ability.

We'll let the doctors answer the question for him. The need for elbow surgery finally ended his season in August. Oh, and since he was already done, he had another operation to repair torn cartilage in his left ankle.

Now?

"I'm just happy to play in the field and not worry about anything," he says.

Don't let that remark fool you, either.

Choo is driven for a big season, certainly one more in line with the .390 on-base and .467 slugging percentages he had produced for the seven seasons prior to last year's .714 OPS.

This is a player who was so concerned about what others thought of him – both in the USA and his native South Korea – after a 2011 DUI arrest that he went into an extended slump. Manager Manny Acta and others had to help him work through the consuming worries he had let people down.

All current manager Jeff Banister has to watch is that a healthy Choo doesn't try to prove too much too quickly.

"It's more keeping an eye on him," Banister says. "Checking in with him. How are you really feeling? Body language tells me a lot."

Here's Banister's current translation of that language:

"I see a healthy player. I see a guy that's moving around well. I haven't seen any limitations. I haven't seen him draw back on anything. He's showing up every day with the same energy."

Banister has given Choo a lot of DH time this spring to help him catch up on at-bats without over-taxing his body with more outfield play than he'd usually get in the spring.

"There's always a concern when a guy's been injured and missed significant time," Banister says. "Take a guy like Prince. It was 9 ½ months since he had a competitive at-bat. There's physical shape, everyday professional athlete physical strength. Then there's getting in baseball shape. Then to game shape. It's been a long time since these guys have experienced these things."

Choo admits he notices the difference already.

"Yeah," he says. "New life."

**

Do the hustle

Banister is putting his stamp on his first team as a manager, no matter the price.

He wouldn't divulge the amount but a passed ball by the Chicago White Sox, he says, "Cost me out of my pocket."

That's a good thing.

Fielder moved from first to second on the ball that catcher Rob Brantly couldn't handle and eventually scored on a wild pitch.

"We put an emphasis on the base running and the dirt-ball reads and the free 90s," Banister says of finding ways to advance a base, aka move up 90 feet. "I challenged them all. We have the kangaroo courts with the fines and all that and I said, 'You want to fine me? Be the first one to get a dirt-ball read.'"

Banister was especially pleased it was Fielder.

"It would mean more money-wise for one of the kids coming up from the minor leagues," he says. "What a groundswell that is to have one of your power guys and leaders, one of the guys everybody watches, to be excited about that. Shoot, I was happy."

Truth be told, it was the kind of passed ball that would allow just about anyone to advance.

"A lot of guys react after the fact," Banister says. "But the anticipation, there was no hesitation. It was heightened awareness. The ball was down and he was already moving. If it would have been a blocked ball, he would have gotten (the base). If we can just get guys to anticipate, not react."

Banister clearly wants more than the power that has long been a Rangers trademark. And he's looking for ways to overcome what's already begun as another injury-dominated season that can suck the life out of a team.

"It's energy and fun," he says. "We're trying to create a culture and an attitude of trying to be bold and aggressive and look for those types of things that are going to allow us to win ballgames. It's an identity more than anything else."

**

Mood music

Most media members covering a team come to work every day with subjects they want to explore about the team and its players, the information that should be of most interest to the fans consuming their reports.

There's an inside joke among reporters about the rare unprepared or lazy one who doesn't really know what to ask a manager or coach, so they come up with some catch-all like, "What's the mood?"

Well, there's a real temptation to ask exactly that at Rangers camp these days.

Yu Darvish has changed everything.

On a team that endured a ruinous sequence of injuries right from spring training a year ago, the realization that their star Japanese pitcher would have Tommy John surgery – and, no, he's not the only injured Ranger this spring – has created a difficult battle to overcome a feeling of here-we-go-again resignation.

The players and coaches go about their business like all the other teams that feel the thud when a star player goes down – the old next-man-up bravado.

The Rangers have a new manager and Banister isn't going to betray the upbeat style that helped make the jump from coach in Pittsburgh.

Still, they all know what this means.

But the large group of Japanese media members assigned to the Rangers isn't sure. They have little taste for the battle to overcome the somber mood.

Some of them wonder what's next – for them. No need to hang around Texas all summer detailing the tedious process Darvish faces. It's not like he's going to want to get up in front of them every day and say, "Yep, did a couple of curls with a one-pound weight today. Still hope I can make it back by next Opening Day."

Some will just go home. A few of the veterans who have been feeding the voracious appetite for Japan's sports dailies for more than a decade will move on to other players – Seattle's Hisashi Iwakuma will get a lot of the attention but there's also still the saga surrounding Masahiro Tanaka of the Yankees, whose elbow problems also could lead to surgery.

"But Darvish is special," says reporter Hideki Okuda, who's been doing this through Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka and the rest.

How Japanese players fare in the major leagues remains a huge matter of pride in their homeland, especially the star – even iconic – players.

Darvish is in that category.

Matsui tops the list because he combined ability with accessibility for the media and, by extension, the Japanese fans. Ichiro, for all his spectacular ability, often was more aloof with the dozens of reporters on hand just because he was. For the fans at home, he's more revered than adored.

Matsuzaka had a special place because he became legendary in his homeland for his performances in the annual Koshien high school tournament. The closest parallel for American fans is the player who grabs the national spotlight leading his team through the NCAA basketball tournament.

Darvish has become one of them.

And now, he's injured.

But, it's not as if he failed. He's been one of the game's best pitchers each of his three seasons in Texas and, considering the success rate of the surgery and rehab he faces, he'll probably be particularly good again.

But he's out while Tanaka, the biggest signing from Japan since Darvish, is gingerly testing his arm hoping he can avoid the same operation.

The same operation Matsuzaka – the most significant pitching signing from Japan before Darvish – had. And Junichi Tazawa had. And Akinori Otsuka, Tsuyoshi Wada, and Kyuji Fujikawa.

What to make of it all for the Japanese fan?

"Do you think this will make MLB teams reluctant to sign Japanese pitchers?"

"Don't Americans think pitchers throw too much in Japan?"

Those are the questions from the Japanese reporters that overshadow how Darvish feels today or how the Rangers will fill the hole in their rotation.

They're asking, in essence, "What do you think of our players?" "What do you think of our baseball?"

Darvish told them last summer at the All-Star Game, "If you really want to protect players, we should add one more spot to the starting rotation."

That's the six-man rotation used in Japan.

Okuda and other Japanese reporters who have covered most of the Japanese players in the U.S. say the most common concern they hear from the pitchers is that the baseball here is more difficult to grip. That's a sentiment expressed again this week by Red Sox closer Koji Uehara in an interview with the Boston Globe. He says the adjustment causes more stress to the forearm.

Still, the reported rates of Tommy John surgery in Japan's major leagues is less than in MLB, almost half over the past few seasons, though the numbers fluctuate significantly from year to year on both sides of the Pacific.

The questions remain but the process begins. Who will get better first – the Rangers or Darvish?

GALLERY: Spring training scenes