most underrated players

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.

Kingman was also a world class dickhead.

well, so was Ted Williams

i think torii hunter is kinda underrated (despite a -.6 war this yr ¯\(°_o)/¯)

Brisbee:

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/8/19/6045751/most-underrated-players-in-baseball-mlb

don't know what his top 5 will look like, but I still think Beltre is underrated.

lol @ the cody allen quiz

i'm gonna guess alex gordon for #1

also i'm curious about this:

He's hitting .297/.335/.406, good for a 105 OPS+. Those are fine numbers, sure, but you have to force yourself to remember it's 2014, which is a lot closer to 1968 than 2000 when it comes to the run-scoring environment. Put him on the 2000 Royals, and you might have a .330 hitter, someone who clearly stands out.

*pitching was worse

Pitchers are definitely better now, basically every team has two or three relievers throwing 95 and putting up K/9 rates like Billy Wagner or Eric Gagne in their primes. I also think that all of the big tech/stats breakthroughs (pitch f/x, better valuations of defense and defensive positioning) have favoured pitching and defense.

alex gordon is the kind of player who would deserve to get into the HOF if he plays like he has for another ten years.

i'm starting to think Alex Gordon has a slim chance at the MVP, and is def. getting nominated.

naaah, we're not there yet

I also don't think he's in Trout's class (no one is)

Brisbee pt 2

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/8/20/6049561/most-underrated-players-in-baseball

another year under the radar i might put Rendon on that list

yeesh i'm not sure anyone's missed the klubes train this year, which is his first full year as a good baseball pitcher

gordon should've been somewhere

Hiroki Kuroda deserves a prize for being underrated even though he's played with the Yankees and Dodgers for his entire career.

ya, i have no idea how he pulled that off.

Ian Kinsler. I was looking at this career box the other day:

-- his career WAR is 46.7 after his age-33 season (didn't get started till he was 24); his per-season WAR is 4.7, per-650 PA 5.4
-- only twice (1.9, 2.4) in 10 seasons has he been under 4.0
-- 184 HR, may end up in the 250 range
-- 100+ runs five times, between 70-90 RBI seven times
-- excellent defense, pretty good speed
-- MVP votes four out of 10 seasons
-- JAWS has him as the 23rd best second baseman ever

Real longshot, but--coming off WARs of 5.0/5.7/6.0--four or five more seasons like that and he'd be in the HOF gray area. Is he generally regarded as one of the most underrated players in the game? He doesn't show up in this thread.

^^^ian kinsler is i think turning into the new Beltre, as far as consistency and that creeping possibility of a good HOF case. not sure he can have another four or five seasons like his last few but if he does he'll be approaching a career WAR of 80. that's probably a real stretch, though.

he'll probably pass jeff 'most homers by a second baseman' kent in WAR this year but i think kinsler will be hurt by a) never getting anywhere near an MVP b) maybe never being the best hitter on his own team

Similar Batters
Hanley Ramirez (910)
Chase Utley (910)
Brandon Phillips (903)
Travis Fryman (888)
Rich Aurilia (888)
Bret Boone (884)
Bobby Grich (879)
Jhonny Peralta (875)
Joe Gordon (875) *
Dustin Pedroia (868)

As I wrote on some other thread, I think Adrian Gonzalez's home parks (Dodgers and Padres for the bulk of his career) have ensured that he'll never get any HOF consideration. He's basically the opposite of Troy Tulowitzki:

(close to the same number of games)

Home: .280/.354/.459/.813, 127 HR, 513 RBI
Away: .300/.369/.524/.893, 181 HR, 633 RBI

If you simply double his road stats, he still falls short. But if you take his road stats and add them onto a favorable home park(s), who knows.

until writers learn to look beyond unadjusted dinosaur slash stats -- hey, there are already some! it's not 1997! wowza!

was surprised to not see Beltre on the above list, but that list wasn't including the 2010. since the beginning of that season, he's accumulated 46.2 WAR and passed everyone on that list except Pujols and A-Rod. also 17 of those guys have retired (except Beltre, Pujols, and Suzuki.) the current active top 20:

1. Albert Pujols (17, 37) 100.2 R
2. Adrian Beltre (20, 38) 90.7 R
3. Carlos Beltran (20, 40) 70.4 B
4. Miguel Cabrera (15, 34) 69.7 R
5. Chase Utley (15, 38) 64.8 L
6. Robinson Cano (13, 34) 64.3 L
7. Ichiro Suzuki (17, 43) 59.2 L
8. Ian Kinsler (12, 35) 54.8 R
9. Mike Trout (7, 25) 51.9 R
10. Joe Mauer (14, 34) 51.1 L
11. Dustin Pedroia (12, 33) 51.0 R
12. Joey Votto (11, 33) 50.3 L
13. David Wright (13, 34) 49.9 R
14. Evan Longoria (10, 31) 48.5 R
15. Matt Holliday (14, 37) 45.6 R
16. Curtis Granderson (14, 36) 45.4 L
17. Ryan Braun (11, 33) 44.4 R
18. Troy Tulowitzki (12, 32) 43.7 R
19. Adrian Gonzalez (14, 35) 43.2 L
20. Ben Zobrist (12, 36) 43.1 B

oops, Beltran also hasn't retired. anyway, Beltre is also the only one still playing at a high level.

i guess from that list, in keeping w/the spirit of this thread, I think Evan Longoria is super underrated. playing in Tampa doesn't help, and maybe neither does the fact that he was a massively hyped prospect who was maybe overshadowed and has simply had a vv quietly outstanding career to date.