most underrated players

Maybe Hudson is under the radar this year - but he was certainly a name when he was part of the that great starting 3-some in Oakland.

Is it fair to say Michael Young's underrated?

It depends how you're rating him. Are you rating him as a $16mil/year player, which is what he makes this year and the next two years? Then he's overrated.

He has been consistently good for his entire career. He's never had an OPS over .900, but he's always in the .750-.900 range. He's played reasonably well at every infield position. Not rangey, but a good catch and throw guy.

I wasn't thinking about salary (something I'm generally oblivious to--had no idea he made that much); more that he seems underpublicized for a guy as consistent as he's been since 2003. Baseball Reference even has him over 100 points on their (James's) HOF Monitor, putting him into the "likely" category. That's way too charitable, but he may be in the midst of his best season yet, and another five or six solid years, who knows.

actually agree w/ clemenza on this one

I pondered the significance of that "actually" for a few minutes...I'm okay with it!

Andrew McCutchen had to make the All-Star team this year as an injury sub. That's insane.

High Heat Stats has been unrolling their lists of "Under-appreciated Players of the '80s/'90s" the past week or so. The full lists:

'90s

1. Kevin Appier
2. Kenny Lofton
3. Tony Phillips
4. Steve Reed
5. Eric Plunk
6. Shane Mack
7. Mike Jackson
8. John Valentin
9. Dave Clark
10. Jose Rijo

'80s

1. Dwayne Murphy
2. Dave Stieb
3. Bill Doran
4. Danny Darwin
5. Von Hayes
6. Mario Soto
7. Mark Eichhorn
8. Gary Redus
9. Jim Clancy
10. Dwight Evans

There wasn't one specific methodology used, so to a degree the lists are subjective, but they're based on a mix of the usual sabermetric benchmarks. There are already three Jays pitchers on the '80s list, but I might add a fourth: Tom Henke. I always felt he was underpublicized in comparison to the other name closers of the day.

E.g.: in a decade where Mark Davis and Steve Bedrosian won Cy Youngs, Henke didn't receive a single Cy Young vote in his entire career; he got five points in the '85 MVP vote.

i always thought Key was dominated by the shadow of Stieb - but that could have just been up here.

i was eyeballing jason thompson's stats a couple nights ago (that baseball reference rabbithole!) and the dude wasn't a HOFer but he had some outstanding seasons w/detroit and pittsburgh (exhibits a and b re: his underratedness.)

arguments?

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/7/17/3163647/most-underrated-players-in-baseball-mlb

Beltre for sure. Even putting aside the 57 WAR at age 33, he's got a decent shot at 500 HR/3,000 hits.

I have admired Choo since I saw him hit an IPHR at Tacoma (2006?).

Mark Buehrle might be the most underrated pitcher in the game. He's seventh in WAR among active pitchers (which also underrates him somewhat, since he's only five WAR out of second place), won a WS with a team in a large market, has been arguably the best fielding pitcher in the game for a while, never gets hurt, throws 200+ IP every year, never has a bad season ... and he's only 33, so it's not hard to see him finishing with 250+ wins and 70+ WAR. Those would be HOF worthy numbers, but he's never really been great, just really good nearly every year, which probably kills his chances. Although he still might turn into the poster boy for being underrated for being v. good for a long time, like Mike Mussina did.

Is Torii Hunter underrated or overrated? He's going to finish his career with 2000+ hits, 300+ HR, nine gold gloves, and a career WAR between 40-50 (accumulated very steadily--this year should make 12 straight years where he was almost between 3.0-5.0 every year). On the other hand, he makes almost $20 million a year, has made All-Star teams and gotten MVP support, and carries a just-okay lifetime OPS of .800.

i sorta bristle at the notion of choo being most underrated... otherwise, pretty good list

Hunter is one of those who stayed 'underrated' too long

Defensive stats are just a jumble of numbers to me, so I wasn't sure if Hunter was the kind of player who earned his first few gold gloves, then won a few on reputation.

Neyer on Buehrle:

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/7/18/3165852/mark-buehrle-miami-marlins-pitches-changeups

Hunter doesn't seem underrated or overrated. A CF who hits and fields consistently well for a decade is a fairly rare thing, but it doesn't mean he's a superstar or should be making superstar money.

High Heat Stats has been unrolling their lists of "Under-appreciated Players of the '80s/'90s" the past week or so. The full lists:

'90s

1. Kevin Appier
2. Kenny Lofton
3. Tony Phillips
4. Steve Reed
5. Eric Plunk
6. Shane Mack
7. Mike Jackson
8. John Valentin
9. Dave Clark
10. Jose Rijo

'80s

1. Dwayne Murphy
2. Dave Stieb
3. Bill Doran
4. Danny Darwin
5. Von Hayes
6. Mario Soto
7. Mark Eichhorn
8. Gary Redus
9. Jim Clancy
10. Dwight Evans

There wasn't one specific methodology used, so to a degree the lists are subjective, but they're based on a mix of the usual sabermetric benchmarks. There are already three Jays pitchers on the '80s list, but I might add a fourth: Tom Henke. I always felt he was underpublicized in comparison to the other name closers of the day.

― clemenza

tony phillips was such an awesome player, from age 31-40 he accumulated 35+ in WAR. w/the tigers he was amazing, and he had this incredible season w/the white sox in '96 batting atop a lineup that included peak era big hurt, ventura, baines, tartabull. not quite as fun as the early '90s tigers teams he was on but up there.

Tony Phillips was a great utility player for clubs to have, Tony LaRussa spent the last 20+ years of his career trying to find another guy like him. To be fair, LaRussa had a few singular seasons where he would find some guy that could rake at the plate and fill in a couple of positions, but there really there were very few that had the utility skills of Phillips.

"I think a question on Dunn is whether he will hit the wall like Richie Sexton did"

I guess we can say Adam Dunn has kind of hit the wall. His somewhat comeback year last year was kinda Kong-esque. Dunn's really not been the same since he had to have that appendix out and he rushed back in like a week. I'd put Dunn as a pretty big longshot to get to 500 at this point, unless he has some big reversal of fortune health wise, as he was always lumbering but the guy looks real slow right now. AD's got a deal through next year, but unless he can bring some more production, you got to think the White Sox eventually are going to cut bait on him.

i remember u gary redus

Redus holds the record for the highest batting average in a minor league season. In his first season in 1978, Redus hit .462 for Billings in the Pioneer League over the course of their 68 game season (Willie Aikens holds the full-season-league record, .454 for Puebla in the Mexican League in 1986).

I'm sure this has been pointed out by many people, but it's interesting how broadly similar the careers of Mario Soto and Jose Rijo are, above and beyond the Reds connection.

I remember Gary Redus with the Reds. He was always looked as a bit of a dissapointment, but the guy played in the bigs until he was 37. Those early 80s Reds teams were very bad. Redus, Paul Householder and the recently deceased Frank Pastore were all three supposed to be the new talent to take the Reds back to promise, but it didn't happen. Mario Soto on that list was also on those same clubs, a very good starter on a pretty bad club until arm problems got to him.

Jose Rijo was really good, but the guy had bad arm problems. I always thought it was cool that he made it back after 5-6 years out of the big leagues to have at least a different goodbye with the Reds in his late 30s, even though he wasn't the same pitcher. I kind of have the same hope for Mark Prior in some ways in that he at least earns his way back to the bigs and the career at least ends on a different note somewhat.

Bill Doran also has a Reds connection in that he is from Cincy and was traded for in the 90 pennant drive and actually played pretty well helping the club survive a late swoon then got injured right before the playoffs started. He played for the Reds for a couple more years.

Bill Doran and Dickie Thon were a pretty good hitting 2B/SS tandem for the Astros for a couple of years in the early 80s. Thon got sidelined with injuries too, but he was a good hitter for a while.

i was watching on wor (presumably) when mike torrez hit dickie thon

I forgot that was it...yeah Dickie Thon was really good in 82-83. I was like 12 or 13 then and probably at the PEAK of just sheer amount of baseball I watched daily, good chunk of it being Cubs and Braves games on cable or following the Reds, so I remember those Astros clubs quite well.

Guys I grew up with we played Status Pro Baseball (Sports Illustrateds version of Stratomat) and a game we made up called Dice Baseball and I remember one buddy of mine would love to go "C'mon Dickie, C'mon Dickie C'mon Dickie" when using Thon in those games before rolling or pulling the card.

Stuff like this makes me think it is a total bummer that the Astros are in the AL.

Long before WAR, James proselytized in one of the Abstracts for Thon being one of the best players in baseball. And he indeed leads NL position players in '83 (7.4), and finished 6th in '82 (6.1).

yeah i played a stratomatic variant that left me knowing way too much about the '82 cards and pirates -- i was ten

jason thompson hit 30 homers, for one thing

oh man, dickie thon! most of his career was played before i was born, but i remember seeing his name in my BJ historical baseball abstract. i called him dick-a-thon, which i'm sure was thoroughly original among 12 year old bill james readers

shout-out to davey lopes.

his career is really good considering he didn't hit the bigs until he was 27 and wasn't a starter til the following year. also, he was my favorite cub in 1985:

99 games

.284/.383/.444 slash

47 SB, 4 CS(!)

all at the age of 40(!!)

5. Von Hayes

Kind of missed this one in that list. Von Hayes was hyped pretty big coming into baseball kind of like Gregg Jeffries a few years later and while both of them were decent to good, neither one turned into a superstar like many thought they would. I seem to recall that Hayes was hyped big time when he got traded to Philly.

That 70s Dodger infield of Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey was pretty damn good and they played together for a LONG time.

won a world series in 1981 too

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/millira01-bat.shtml?mobile=false

Never realized what a walks machine this dude was. A couple of decent WAR seasons in there.

I'll put this Posnanski column here, just because it goes over some of the same Adam Dunn/Dave Kingman conversation we had on this thread a few years ago, including the possibility of collusion:

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/08/06/even-if-he-reaches-500-homers-adam-dunn-is-not-hall-of-famer/related/

It's kind of a redundant column--things have changed so much since Kingman's time that I don't think there's anybody who seriously thinks Dunn's a HOF candidate. And yes, he will be off the ballot in a year, as Kingman was. But I'll stand by my original point upthread that had Kingman reached 500 HR, in the context of 1992 or 1993, that would have been an awkward situation for the writers. My guess is he would have drawn as much as 20-25% first time around.

I don't see it as awkward for a sensible writer in any context. Kingman's sole asset was HR power, likely moreso than any player in history to that point. Dunn is multidimensional by comparison.

Multi-dimensional as in two--Dunn hits home runs and he also walks, instead of just hits home runs. Obviously hugely important, but as Posnanski notes, he's just barely ahead of Kingman in career WAR anyway. And the bulk of Dunn's HR were hit during the tail end of the offensive boom, so I think you have to discount them a bit.

I can't prove you wrong--I'm trying to project what might have happened in 1993 had something happened in 1988 that didn't happen; that's about as hypothetical as it gets--but I still think you're looking at it from a 2014 perspective. In 1984, just two years removed from his exit, Kingman finished 13th in MVP voting. He was a 35-year-old DH, his team finished 4th and under .500, and he was disliked by writers (the rat incident hadn't happened yet, but he was already disliked). And he still finished 13th. Why? Because he hit 35 HR, and even more so, because he knocked in 118. He didn't get any votes two years later when he also hit 35, but I'm sure that was because he fell short of 100 RBI (94) and his average had plummeted from an acceptable .268 to a more hideous .210. My point is, I don't think player evaluation by the writers changed that drastically between '84 and '86 (James was getting better and better known, but his influence was still relatively narrow), and I don't think there was all that much change between '86 and '93, when Kingman might have debuted with 500 HR.

Today, it wouldn't matter--one and out, as should be the case. Then, I don't think so.

Kingman had his best year for the '79 Cubs, leading the NL in HR and slugging; still finished only 11th in MVP that year. The deserving reasons are that he still didn't crack the league's top 10 in bWAR (just 10th in oWAR, behind the likes of Larry Parrish and Lee Mazzilli) and his counting stats were goosed by Wrigley Field; the actual reasons are likely that he played for a noncontender AND the writers hated him.

Assuming those extra 58 HR to get to 500 didn't result in a couple 60-HR seasons, I think he slides off the ballot after one year anyway.

i think even then kingman was regarded as just a "two true outcomes" guy, and it's not like beyond his '79 season he was ever a super-impressive homer guy on a season-by-season basis. when he was playing my childhood memories of his '80s seasons were that he was overshadowed in the HR department not only by the obvious suspects like schmidt and murphy but also such legends as gorman thomas and tony armas. i suspect one and done as well.

Actually for the early to mid 80s Kingman was a pretty impressive homer guy. It was not a super homer friendly era.

Kingman was a more consistent hitter of homers than any of the non-Schmidt/Murphy guys you mentioned too (Greg Luzinski also sprang to mind although he was a bitter all around hitter than Armas/Thomas/Kingman).

Yeah I mean his HR numbers were always up there and I guess he was fairly consistent. I guess I phrased that poorly, I just think in those seasons there always seemed to be some less famed slugger who would out perform him HR wise or some old rando like Darrell Evans would drop 40 HR like nbd, and I think during that era he was overshadowed in those seasons. Except for '79. But yeah he retired when I was 10 so I'm probably misremembering.

he hit lotsa tape-measure bombs in his Mets heyday, but no one cared when he was dealt (well, it was same day as Seaver)

I tried to actually project forward to the appropriate ballot, and you guys are probably right, one and done.

If you give Kingman three more years of overstaying his welcome so he could get to 500, he retires in '89, comes on the ballot in '95. Looking to see who was the best first-year match for him that year--keeping in mind that no one really matched up well with Kingman in those days; he was Adam Dunn/Mark Reynolds 25 years before the fact--George Foster was probably the closest. Not really similar, but in a general sense they were both low-OBP power hitters. (Darrell Evans also came on that year, and he matches up better in terms of HR and BA, but he of course was a really good all-around player.) Foster only had 348 career HR, which is well short of 500, but he had other advantages over Kingman: the 50-HR season (still sort of legendary then, before the deluge), the MVP, the famous team. Foster got 4.1% of the vote and was finished. Baylor, a somewhat closer match, got 2.6% in his second year and was finished.

So even though 500 HR was a much more hallowed number then than now, it probably wouldn't have been enough to keep Kingman on the ballot. I will point out, though, that even coming onto the ballot well short of 500 in '92, he still finished ahead of both Ceser Cedeno and Toby Harrah in their first years, players who were far superior, and he was only behind Grich (also first-year) 11 votes to 3, and he's now recognized as one of the greatest players not in the HOF.

Jim Rice was a one dimensional player with inflated hitting stats from his home ballpartk and everybody hated him. Somehow he's in the HOF (and he hit fewer HR's than Kingman).

I'm not saying Kingman would have gotten in, but there's no way he's one and done with 500 HR.

And yeah, Rice had a couple of monster seasons and won an MVP award, Kingman didn't. I think there's still a comparison to be made though.

I'm not happy that Rice made the HOF, but he does have a 47.4 WAR to Kong's 17.3.