The market for Shin-Soo Choo

— -- LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Shin-Soo Choo is, by acclamation, a very good player with a lot to offer a major league team. But the speculative frenzy surrounding him at the winter meetings has more to do with falling dominoes than his stellar on-base percentage.

Now that free agents Robinson Cano, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran, Curtis Granderson and Mike Napoli are off the board, the focus naturally turns to Choo, a hit-by-pitch and OBP machine who has a special niche as a true leadoff hitter. He's sure to be a prime topic of conversation when agent Scott Boras emerges from his suite and gives his annual State of the Boras Corporation Clientele update in Orlando in the next day or two.

A year ago at this time, most executives envisioned Choo as a nice five-year, $80 million player. He has yet to make an All-Star team or finish higher than 12th in MVP balloting, and he's a career .243 hitter with a .680 OPS against left-handed pitching. But the gusher of TV money and the baseball-wide run on hitters has accelerated the pursuit of Choo and sent the estimates of what it will take to sign him into orbit.