Most underrated and overrated player??

[timconnelly]

Who would you say is the most underrated player of all time? If you had to pick one player who has been the most consistently overlooked, underappreciated, or generally forgotten despite their having been a great player, who would it be?

Who is the most overrated: The guy who got too much attention or whose statline is the most misleading?

If a couple of names comes to mind on either side, feel free to include them!

[Skipper Steve]

This may start a war, but, I always thought Brooks Robinson was overrated.

[Skipper Steve]

I also thought that Brian Downing was extremely underrrated.

[Skipper Steve]

Top 10 - OWP
9000+ PA during 1972-1992:

OWP
1 Mike Schmidt .693
2 George Brett .678
3 Eddie Murray .667
4 Dave Winfield .640
5 Dwight Evans .623
6 Brian Downing .613
7 Darrell Evans .606
8 Pete Rose .604
9 Jim Rice .597
10 Robin Yount .590

[Skipper Steve]

Top 10 - OWP
9000+ PA during 1955-1977:


1 Willie Mays .740
2 Hank Aaron .728
3 Frank Robinson .721
4 Harmon Killebrew .673
5 Al Kaline .668
6 Carl Yastrzemski .655
7 Pete Rose .647
8 Billy Williams .640
9 Roberto Clemente .636
10 Rusty Staub .620
11 Ron Santo .594
12 Lou Brock .583
13 Ernie Banks .574
14 Vada Pinson .548
15 Willie Davis .544
16 Brooks Robinson .516

[hmrsf]

Dwight Evans is the most underrated player of my lifetime. Thats my story and I am sticking to it!

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by hmrsf
Dwight Evans is the most underrated player of my lifetime.

I think I remember him - - he played for the Orioles, no?

[hmrsf]

He played one year for the birds after the soxs stabbed him in the back.


BTW....the old stadium was a dump. I can't wait to see the new one.

[nightal]

This may make me very unpopular, but Joe DiMaggio, is my choice. Sorry.

[nightal]

By the way, Brooks Robinson over George Brett or Eddie Mathews as a third basemen on the all-century team was ridiculous.

[timconnelly]

I can understand your choice of Joe D though I don't agree with it. He was an awesome player prior to WW2 but after the war he was never the same. I know that only constitutes 7 seasons but the Yankees won 6 pennants and 5 World Series titles during those years. If a player makes incredibly important contributions to a winning team, you have to elevate his ranking based on that: Baseball is a team sport and the pay off is on winning.

DiMaggio was hurt statistically by playing in Yankee Stadium just as Williams was helped tremendously by playing at Fenway. I don't know if you knew this but DiMaggio's career average on the road was .333 to Williams' .325. And their slugging averages were a very similar . 615 for Williams to .610 for DiMaggio. Honesty causes me to mention that Teddy Ballgame had much the better on base average at .468 to .405.

Yankee pitchers were consistently allowing a lot less runs in their home games. It was a hard place to score runs during the DiMaggio era. Look at this for the number of runs allowed by Yankee pitchers. (What this demonstrates is that Joe's low at home numbers are a statistical illusion that didn't hurt his team.)

Year Home Away
36 311 420
37 298 373
38 342 368
39 261 295
40 284 387
41 295 336


I checked the same figures for Boston and there were some years when Boston pitchers allowed a lot more runs at home and some when they didn't. So this is not a knock on Williams: It is just to say that if DiMaggio's numbers don't knock you over, it isn't because they didn't have tremendous value.

Tim, so you're saying that the perceived advantage of Teddy Ballgame over Joe D was what we call "park adjusted", or that the park itself gave a large influence? If so, and I'm understanding you correctly, would that be the distance from home to LF, CF & RF? The height of the wall?

[timconnelly]

That's a great question for which I don't have a great answer.

There are so may variables at work that there is very likely to always be some guesswork as to why one ballpark is more condusive to hitting than another. The vision for a hitter may be better at one park, the ball might carry better, the distance or height of the fences, the amount of room in foul territory, or something about the pitching mound: I'm sure that there are other reasons not mentioned here.

But even though the reason can't alwasy be measured, the fact that there is SOME advantage or disadvantage CAN be measured.

One thing that I've noticed is that Bobby Doerr and Junior Stephens, both right handed hitters, are often criticized for having inflated numbers because they ran up awesome numbers at Fenway. Williams does not catch that because he was lefthanded. But the value of a hitter ultimately does not depend on how good he would have done in a neutral setting. If Williams was knocking in a lot of runs as a lefthanded batter at Fenway when LOTS of other people were doing it because of an advantage they had of being right handed, the end result is that the more runs that are scored, the less value ANYBODY'S runs have.

[timconnelly]

For underrated and overrated, I'll mention 2 former Cincinnatti teammates: Frank Robinson and Pete Rose.

According to Lee's program, a league average player playing the same positions as Rose, would have knocked out 3562 hits with 312 home runs and 1587 RB1 during the Rose years. His durabilty can never be questioned but his productivity is a matter of record: quite simply, whether he did or didn't bet on baseball, there are lots of players who aren't in the Hall who were a lot better than Rose was.

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by nightal
By the way, Brooks Robinson over George Brett or Eddie Mathews as a third basemen on the all-century team was ridiculous.

Ditto.