Cy Morong looks at career WAR and MVP shares to come up with two lists of underrated and overrated players. It turns out that depending on how he looks at the data, Willie Mays or Wade Boggs may be the most underrated players. Looking at the two lists, I tend to favor Mays.
The most interesting thing about the lists is that they show a systematic bias. The underrated players tend to be skill infielders (2b, 3b, ss), and outfielders who did not hit a ton of home runs. Power hitting first basemen and outfielders dominate the overrated lists, although some catchers appear there as well. Over time, MVP voters overrated power and catching defense, while underrated OBP and infield defense. Mays fits the profile of an overrated player, while Boggs fits the profile on an underrated player.
I will note that Henry Aaron shares the first underrated list with Willie Mays. It’s possible that the two competing with each other split votes, so neither did as well as one would in isolation. Eddie Matthews probably contributed in this regard as well.
The antithesis of Mays appears to be Brooks Robinson, who makes the overrated list despite having the qualities of an underrated player. Brooks may be the most overrated player of all time!
I’m happy to see Willie Randolph, Graig Nettles, and Bobby Grich on the underrated list. While Randolph and Nettles probably don’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, both had careers that in my mind, should have kept them on the ballot more than one year. Grich not in the Hall is one of the great mis-votes of this age.
“Mays fits the profile of an overrated player”
What? Typo?
JIminNC » No typo. If you look at the group of overrated players in the post, and the group of underrated players, Mays’s power puts him more in the overrated group. I don’t think Mays was overrated, but MVP voters tend to recognized the type of skills Mays brought to the game, more than the kind of skills that Bobby Grich brought to the game, for example.
Ah, so you mean that Mays was underrated despite fitting the profile of the overrated players? Got it.
Because you twice say Mays was underrated.
JIminNC » Yes, exactly.
I think the positional adjustments skew the numbers too much. Jeter is a good example if you look at the numbers. He has a 71.6 bWAR for being a very good hitter overall(not great) who did not field his position very well.
He had 366 RAA offensively and -234 runs saved defensively, and another 60 base running for a net of 192 runs, or about 19 WAA, or about 1 WAA per year. Puts a different perspective on things.
However, add in positional adjustments (130), and the replacement differential (416), he gets another 54 wins (above replacement) just for being penciled into the lineup as a SS. And at 72 WAR he is considered a slam dunk HOF’er (and I am not arguing he should not be in the HOF, just that he is not as good as WAR suggests)
WAR basically gives middle IF’ers and CF’ers a huge handicap and introduces a bias against those playing lesser positions.
I am pretty sure there are many great defensive players in the minors who never make it to MLB, but great offensive players are so rare teams find room for them, even if they can’t field their position very well. Yet offensive talent in general is treated as a commodity in equal supply as defensive talent.
Also, there are likely a great many skilled LH players who simply were unable to play any IF position but 1B and they are docked -10 runs per every 600 PA (or 1 Win). A career at 1B will cost a player over 150 runs or 15 wins just from the positional adjustment. So if you are a LH thrower and play the IF your chances of making the HOF per WAR are small
I just think more weight should be given to how a fielder played his position than the position itself which in some cases is determined not by skill but by other factors such as team needs, or handedness.
So I won’t use WAR for either MVP or HOF determinants. It is useful for comparing players of the same or similar positions, but not at different positions.
I clicked to the comments to simply say: “Or, maybe the formula for WAR is wrong!” pft used more words but malkes the same point.
pft » I believe the point of the positional adjustment is to compensate for the real world salaries paid players. If you have first baseman and shortstop playing at the same offensive level, and both are average fielders, the shortstop will be paid more money. This is due to the distribution of talent at shortstop, where it is tougher to find good offense.
Remember, too, WAR is not a formula but a framework. If you think there is a better way to do the positional adjustment, go for it. The people who run FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference are pretty opened minded about improving WAR.
An interesting question would be if five tool players are overrated or underrated as a group. We see someone like Harper or Puig and think “Cooperstown” right off the bat because we’ve seen that package before with Mays and Mantle (and a select few others), and it signals impending greatness, but there’s no guarantee that it will end there–and until advanced statistical analysis came along a lot of people thought Mantle was a bit of an underachiever in spite of the ridiculous things he did on the field. After allowing for all of the effects of unreasonable expectations and projections for such players, where does it all come out?
Looking at Pujols’ seasonal WAR totals, I have a hard time buying him as the most overrated player of all time by any measure; if anything, it’s a historic injustice that he only has three NL MVPs (though admittedly that’s probably because writers never gave anyone more than three before The Barry came along, and are probably even more reluctant to do so now that the PED issue cast a shadow over awards 4 through 7).
Mays (and Mantle) were definitely underrated if you just look at MVPs–they should have won six or seven each at minimum (the 1960 & 1961 AL MVPs and the 1962 NL MVP are only the most historically notorious examples of this).
David, thanks for posting a link to this. Great comments from everyone.
On Pujols, I went back and did a year by year analysis and he was not nearly as overrated, but still a bit. But it takes alot of time to do an analysis on each year’s vote. So I would have to do every year from 1931-2014 for each league to see where anyone ranks.
Also, I have done work on MVPs and MVP shares by positions. 1B men have gotten alot more of both than you would expect and I think 2Bmen have not done very well.
Here the links
http://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2014/01/has-albert-pujols-been-getting-more-mvp.html
http://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2009/02/mvp-awards-and-award-shares-by-position.html