most underrated players

personally, i always underrate ian kinsler. it's totally arbitrary, but he's 12th in fWAR since 2010

i guess it's just because he's in the AL so i rarely watch him play, and he accumulated a lot of his value through solid defense, which lends itself to underratededereradfdsf

I was thinking about Cruz the other day, that he might be on a list of highest percentage of career WAR accumulated during a player's 30s.

Comparison to three guys I associate with this:

Cruz - 20.5 WAR during 30s/28.1 career WAR = 73%
Bautista - 27.7/34.7 = 80%
Jeff Kent - 40.6/55.2 = 74%
Luis Gonzalez - 32.5/51.5 = 63%

Bautista was 29 when he hit 54 HR, otherwise he'd be up near 100%. I think it's much more common for this to happen with pitchers.

also
edgar martinez - 49.6 of 68.3 = 73%
ozzie smith - 52 of 76.5 = 68%

i should subscribe to the B-R play index so i can see the top ten and past twenty

The Jays had two of them--Edwin just crossed 60%, and I wouldn't be surprised if he works his way up to 75% by the time he retires.

The flip side:

Albert Belle - 68% before he turns 30
Juan Gonzalez - 78%
Ken Griffey Jr. - 84%
Andruw Jones - 92%
Nomar Garciaparra - 93%

mark fidrych - %100

Elvis Andrus? Crossed 30 WAR last season, most years in the 4.0-4.5 range, off to a great start in 2019. Jays fans will always remember him for his role (two crushing errors) in the bat-flip inning.

In James's piece on the greatest center fielders ever:

"I guess that what I am saying is that even among underrated players, (Jimmy Wynn) is underrated. We have a kind of list of historically underrated players, in our field; Bobby Grich, Darrell and Dwight Evans, Gene Tenace, Rick Reuschel. I’m not sure that Wynn gets the references that he deserves on that list."

James has him 14th, a little higher than Jaffe (17th).

brian giles

OBP
1998: .396
1999: .418
2000: .432
2001: .404
2002: .450
2003: .427
2004: .374
2005: .423

....oh

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sdut-steroid-talk-barred-trial-ex-padre-giles-2011apr04-htmlstory.html

Conceding some recency bias here, José Abreu? He's really putting together a steady, solid career, with a possible MVP this year. His career OPS+ is 136. Haven't really heard a lot about him since his rookie year.

really good player; tough that he arrived so late and that we are no longer impressed with first basemen

we'll have to settle for stories about how his veteran leadership helped tim anderson/luis robert win other awards

Abreu got a fair amount of press his rookie year as hit power was so impressive, but the White Sox have been in the doldrums until now.

Add Abreu onto Konerko and then Big Hurt before being a primary DH and the Sox have had a really long run of good hitting first basemen.

"I think a question on Dunn is whether he will hit the wall like Richie Sexton did, who is probably one player that is somewhat similar to Dunn (although he didn't draw as many walks). Sexton was pretty consistently decent, losing only one season to injury and he hit age 32 and he was finished. Don't know if this will be the fate of the Big Donkey or not, but it could be."

Poor Big Donkey, he hit the wall.

Ray Durham is a player who was solid, never really a star, but you could do worse having him at second for a decade.

2000+ hits - .277/.352/.436

Durham did not have as much power, but probably similar career to Ian Kinsler. Hall of Very good at least.

A list of the worst base-stealers ever (based on success rate over 300+ attempts) showed up on my FB wall today. Don Buford was on there at 65.6%.

He was a name when I first started following baseball, so I remember him well. Looked him up, and, in a very short career, definitely underrated.

Only played 10 years, age 26-35, including a 12-game call-up in 1963. Over that time: yearly WAR from 2.3 - 4.9, except for that call-up and a poor final season (4.5 per 650 PA); MVP votes in four out of nine full-time seasons; one of the best position players on the Orioles' historic '69-71 run (about even with Boog Powell after Frank Robinson and Paul Blair; a bit ahead of Brooks Robinson).

Still alive at 83.

contrary to my statement above, we *are* still impressed by first basemen

I was mistakenly looking at Buford's oWAR for those years, not total. Corrected range: 2.5 - 6.9, minus his first and last season.

The old timers at the Orioles Hangout forums never game him the same respect they gave Boog, Belanger or Blair, probably cause he didn't have a standout traditional skill. He was sort of a Zobrist type before anyone knew how valuable that was. Or a worse fielding Bobby Grich.

Lotta B names on those Orioles teams

James tries to quantify underrated and overrated (not behind the paywall):

https://www.billjamesonline.com/the_perception_deficit_score/

Salvador Perez? Very consistent, coming off what likely would have been a career season at 30 if played out. He got some attention when the Royals were in the WS, but I don't hear a lot about him otherwise.

he's a victim of playing in KC, in terms of exposure. if he was in NY he would be a legend

actually, ok, i overstated that, glancing at his stats. i always thought of him as a defensive wunderkind but at least on fangraphs, the defensive stats don't seem to reflect that. that's probably just fangraphs-specific: they added catcher pitch-framing to WAR a while back, as we all probably remember, and there were some HUGE repercussions on career WAR numbers. perhaps Perez was one of those that lost some "value"?

he was pretty middling there for a couple years before missing 2019. good power, absolutely refuses to take a walk.

offhand i can't remember seeing a bigger split between bWAR (24.2) and fWAR (11.9)?

Yeah, I was going by bWAR, where he does decently offensively but really well defensively.

Anyone else find it really odd when a catcher can’t walk to save his life? Like you’d think being a fucking catcher, they’d have a good idea where a ball might be going.

yeah, yadier molina very much cannot take a walk either

It’s weird, right?

it is, and it's excruciating to watch sometimes. but i wonder if that comes down to different styles of hitting. some players are "guess hitters", picking a certain kind of pitch or location, or walking up thinking "i'm going to swing full strength on the first pitch", or taking all the way. other guys are more about insanely fast judgments, pitch recognition, figuring it out in the moment.

yadi seems very much like the former, a guess hitter who is frequently betting on himself to swing first and figure it out

i think i remember yelich saying that he didn't "guess", and that it was all just quick reactions and pitch recognition for him

I suppose when you’re catching, pitch recognition is meaningless when you know whats coming.

New Rule for 2021: Catchers get to call their own pitches while at bat.

Obvious one, but Michael Brantley, having one of his best seasons ever at 34.

Might put José Ramírez first on the list. Relative to his accomplishments, you hear virtually nothing about him.

good one. he’s also on an incredibly team-friendly contract

As points of comparison, think of how well publicized Kris Bryant and Anthony Rendon have been. A lot of that has to do with winning a WS title, and some, I'm sure, with Chicago/Washington/L.A. vs. Cleveland as media markets.

Ramirez (age-28 season): 34.2 bWAR/34.5 fWAR
Bryant (29): 28.6/31.8
Rendon (31): 32.2/36.1

Rendon is a couple of games ahead in fWAR with three extra years.

Machado (age-28 season, 45.1/40.3) at another level in both performance and publicity, although much of his publicity has been bad.

perhaps. bryant has won an mvp, tho.

and i don’t think rendon is actually well-publicized? he’s never even been the biggest star on his own teams

Forgot about the MVP. Rendon seemed to get a lot of (deserved) attention during Washington's WS run, and then a lot during his off-season free agency--or at least relative to Ramirez.

hank greenberg.

only play 9 full seasons. lost most of 41-45 to ww2, bookended by a 7.7 fWAR 1940 and a 7.2 WAR 1946. career OBP of .412.

he has 61.1 career fWAR, which ranks only #115 in MLB history. but it was over only 1394 games. i think there is only one player in MLB history who has more fWAR over fewer games, and that's Mike Trout (1388 games and with 81.2 fWAR already)

in terms of fewest games and greatest value, buster posey came close. 1371 games, 57.5 fWAR

Jackie Robinson: 1382 games, 57.2 WAR
Mookie Betts: 1093 games, 49.9 WAR

I think this is the first Posnanski column in a while that's been sharable; hit 10 most underrated players ever.

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/baseballs-most-underrated-players?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Haven't had a chance to wade through this yet; pretty exhaustive.

https://www.billjamesonline.com/the_most_underrated_players_of_all_time/

Didn't realize that was the last of a three-part post. The numbers are explained in the first part, part II is the most overrated players. I think they're all free.

brett butler was my favorite giant when I was like 6, very cool to see him on that list (I knew James was a fan)

BRENT

He was really good (it is Brett); just had the bad timing of playing in the shadow of the greatest leadoff hitter ever (Henderson) and maybe the second greatest (Raines).