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1. Guapo Posted: July 17, 2012 at 09:16 AM (#4184639)1. Michael Young
2. Howie Kendrick
3. Paul Konerko
4. Shin-Soo Choo
5. Gerardo Parra
6. Nick Markakis
7. Ben Zobrist
8. Alex Gordon
9. Ian Kinsler
10. Miguel Montero
11. Derek Jeter. No, just making sure you're still paying attention. Martin Prado
12. Cliff Pennington
13. Jamey Carroll
14. Robinson Cano
15. Asdrubal Cabrera
My vote is McCutchen. He may be the best player in baseball right now. How many non-serious baseball fans have even heard of him before (the way they would have heard of Pujols, say, or Barry Bonds)?
1. Albert Pujols
2. Ben ############# Zobrist
I'll go ahead and say that, yeah, Ben Zobrist may have a case for the most underrated player in baseball.
ben zobrist is another guy. just always pushing you over the finish line.
a guy who i think deserves a mention is corey hart. corey hits up and down the lineup including leadoff. he has been a right fielder mostly but early on filled in at center and when gamel went down took over first base and has been great. in the lineup 140 odd games a year. always hustles. and nobody in the organization thought he was worth a tinkers darn even though at every level he hit.
This.
Come on, Apple -- would just finish off Adobe and Flash already? Bane of the internet...
Jason Kipnis is a hell of a ballplayer and still completely under the radar. In his first 537 MLB plate appearances, he's got an OPS+ of 120, has stolen 25 bases at a success rate approaching 90%, has hit 18 home runs, gotten on base at a .346 clip, and by every objective measure has been a borderline excellent defensive second baseman. He could easily hit .280 with 20 homers, 30 steals, a .350 OBP, and lead AL second basemen in Total Zone Runs this season.
Wait, wha? Young has a decent case for the worst player in MLB right now. He's hitting an empty .273, good for an OPS+ of 72. He has no speed, no power, doesn't draw walks, and is a disastrous defender at every single position, including 1B. bWAR has him at -1.9 in 86 games. fWAR at -1.0. The guy stinks on ice by any measure.
I should have been clearer: I didn't mean right now, I kind of meant over the years ... kind of a lifetime achievement award of BBTF underratedness.
...and yet even though he's having a terrible year, you still manage to sell him a little short. There is no way in hell he is the worst player in MLB right now, although if you amend to say the worst starting player he might have a case.
1. Albert Pujols
2. Ben ############# Zobrist
Not that he isn't underrated (though he's gotten MVP votes twice), but Ben Zobrist is on the Brett Lawrie list of guys who get about 450 extra dWAR a season under the new system by being used in shifts all the time.
Maybe I pay too much attention to the draft, but I hardly ever consider anyone who was a high draft pick or top draft prospect to be underrated, at least not until years later when he's failed enough to be poorly regarded.
Maybe, he was a pretty good player for a while, but I think he got about the right amount of respect from statheads.
Yeah, there are no doubt some bench scrubs who are probably worse than Young on a per game basis, but their teams have the good sense not to run them out there every day. Texas seems screwed though... benching Young might lead to a clubhouse revolt since he's the Face of the Franchise and is apparently a LEADER OF MEN. Trading him is impossible; he's a 10/5 guy getting paid a lot of money through 2013. I guess the best they can do is hope for a pulled hamstring or something.
It's unbelievable since he's the best player on baseball's most relentlessly famous team, but Robinson Cano is similarly underrated, probably because he's a Bobby Grich type--he does everything very well, but nothing spectacularly well.
Some prominent media guy (McCarver maybe?) insists that Cano is the best hitter for average in baseball.
(I'm aware this is only to a small degree; obviously Cano is far less underrated than guys like Kipnis and Choo.)
Or they can make the safe bet that his hitting will improve to expected levels (or near) and not judge who he is based on 370 PA's....
If he performs at around 95-105 OPS+ in the second half with the ability to fill in at several infield positions he has some value.
What do you expect his hitting to improve to? His numbers last year were fueled by a career high BABIP, but if you look at his career from 2009, his ISO, BB%, and Secondary Average have fallen every single year. He's 35 years old (36 in October) and has played 1200 games in the middle infield. He might be getting a bit unlucky with BABIP so far, but he's also getting to that age where players lose it. I think it's entirely possible that he's just done.
A utility IF who hits like that would have some value, assuming he could actually field an IF position. Young is a butcher at 1B, and worse at every other position. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a 100 OPS+ Young was less valuable than a more traditional good glove/bad bat utility IF.
I had no idea that Robinson Cano was underrated by ANYONE at this point. I tell folks all the time that he's the best 2B in baseball, and the best hitter on the Yankees. Who, other than the odd deranged Yankees fan, believes Cano is anything other than a top-20 player?
And in what world is Jamey Carroll worthy of any kind of rating?
He will probably have a 95-105 OPS+ from here on out. That is more likely than he is "done" as a hitter. How many mid-thirties players have to bounce back from rough stretches before everyone re-learns the small sample size lesson? Ortiz was "done", Konerko has been "done" several times, Dunn is "done," Thome was "done" way back in 2005 etc etc etc etc etc
I don't know about Young's fielding, but I am skeptical that it is as bad as you say.
I might be wrong about his MVP chances after the Pirates crash and burn (partly helped by his BABIP failing to remain as high in the second half as it was in the first) and are no longer an interesting story.
carroll is a really good defender as well as being a nice guy and players put a lot of stock in that combo
craig counsell stayed in the majors forever because of this mix
there is this certain deranged Redsox fan who used to post here....
Yeah, due to his surprising on-base skills and outstanding defense, he is probably more of a solid utility infielder rather than a garden variety 25th man. I suppose that makes him underrated if you thought of him as the latter.
All those guys are 1B/DH types who were/are much, much better than Young as hitters. Young spent most of his playing time in the middle infield and has a career OPS+ of 105. You're comparing apples to wheelbarrows here.
Is it possible he'll rebound and hit better than a 72 OPS+ clip through the rest of the year? Sure. But expecting an aging middle infielder on a clear declining trajectory, and who was never really that good a hitter to begin with, to put up his career average numbers going forward is wrongheaded. The real problem for Texas of course is that even if he could hit at his career average, he'd still be a bad player due to his terrible defense and lack of speed.
The majority of his playing time in the past 2 years has been ... 1B+DH. Granted those guys are of a different class of hitter than Young, but c'mon at worst I'm comparing Granny Smith apples to red delicious.
Isn't that what Young was after 2008 after putting up OPS+'s of 131, 108, 106, and 95 in the prior years? His declining trajectory is only so clear right now if you choose the smallest sample size of data to look at to confirm that this is the moment when age caught up to him. You are right that 95-105 OPS+ for rest of season is probably too optimistic, but to grudgingly say that him besting an OPS+ of 72 for the rest of the year is only a possibility and not the overwhelming likelihood just strengthens my view of him as underrated here.
here'ssssssss jamey
In 2008 he was 31 years old and a shortstop. Now he's 35 and a 1B/DH with a 72 OPS+.
You're most likely right that he can be expected to be better than a 72 OPS+, but so what? Michael Young putting up a 90 OPS+ is still pretty much a worthless player.
When I quit playing fantasy baseball I seriously lost track of who the hell was supposed to be good on the other teams.
With that said, Martin Prado is pretty underrated. He's excellent offensively and defensively and multiple positions (LF, 3B, 2B.)
Prado is not a good defensive 2B, though an excellent defensive 3B. His LF is still kinda unclear, I think, though he certainly looks like quite a good LF.
It helps that the Rays shift and DRS didn't know how to handle that. From 2009 to 2011 WAR has given him 70 runs for his fielding. He now is at 2 runs above this year.
Well, if he goes back to hitting .300 with doubles power, that alleviates the situation that Texas is in which you describe in #17 and it clearly puts him miles away from the worst player in baseball (getting back to the topic of the thread).
I think that's because a lot of people (me) see good things written about Zimmerman and assume (obviously without reading) that Ryan is the one being discussed. I mean, is it really all that hard to keep the Zimmermans on the team limited to one?
EDIT: I mean, at least the Joneses have finally stopped trying to post in all the same threads just to #### with people. Which is sad, I miss them.
They already are.
Now that's just uncalled for.
I honestly had to read this 3-4 times to confirm that it wasn't written about Josh Reddick.
Huh? Did I miss a trade? Or is it the single 'n' thing at the end of the name?
Why do you hate the Joneses?
Just that.
I don't hate all of them.
Sure, sure. Let me guess, just the foreign ones with vestigial tails?
He is on my teh awesome list as of a couple of weeks ago. Sunday Brewers game, Brewers ahead, late innings, Padres making several pitching changes. Some kid I never heard of gets a strikeout and as he is about to windup for next batter, Headley calls time, runs to the mound, takes ball out of his glove and tosses it nto dugout. Checked later, sure enough, kid's first out in the majors.
You can line the bird cage with WAR. If anybody, anyone, thinks Ben Zobrist is the 2nd most valuable player in baseball since 2009 please raise your hand.
here'ssssssss jamey"
Is he as creepy as Joe "The Joker" Randa?
Just looked up his pic....weird in a different way. Carroll is wholesome crossed with creepy.
That Headley is not on this list is all the evidence you need to show he is one of the most underrated position players in the game.
I'm still trying to figure out who it's about. I'm trying to think of someone that David Freese being picked over, would be an insult......My guess is Chase Headley, but I really don't see any difference between the two players to the point that anyone can be upset about.
Please don't jinx Cano by saying the's the new Utley.... though unfortunately Utley is his top similar batter's comp in BR... and his most similar through age 28 comp is still Carlos Baerga (eeek)
On the bright side, Cano doesn't play in the same die hard matter as Utley usually does...
This. Mainly because it makes me so happy.
The most underrated Oriole right now is probably Wieters -- all the disappointment surrounding his failure to become an insta-MVP has obscured the fact that he's developed into one of the top catchers in the league at 26, and is only likely to get better.
Yes, it's Headley. LaRussa picked Street, who had pitched well but in extremely limited IP, over Headley, who was clearly the Padres representative. I don't think the poster was saying it was insulting Freese was picked over Headley or was upset about it, they were just offering it as evidence he's underrated. I was sure LaRussa would do it as he wouuld have good reason to reward/honor his WS MVP and could also add another arm to the roster by going that route. Still was sorry for Headley though; he truly deserved to go.
Well, you could call him Count Full Count, as Padres announcer Mark Grant does. Grant is generally an entertaining and informative announcer despite the cheezy nickname.
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