This is a sequel to my previous article, “Overrated.”

In Bill’s comment on Darrell Evans in the New Historical Abstract (page 546, if you want to look for yourself), he laid out several characteristics of overrated and underrated players. (He also said that Evans was the most underrated player of all time, and my study agrees.) Anyway, I decided to check some of those defining characteristics. I looked at the top 50 underrated and top 50 overrated players in the study.

The two groups were basically the same in batting average, .276 underrated, .279 overrated. But there was a huge difference in secondary average, .337 under, .232 over.

Both groups actually scored more runs than they drove in. The underrated group did have a larger gap between runs scored and RBI. More significantly, the underrated group scored 100 runs 114 times, but drove in 100 only 73 times. Meanwhile, the overrated group scored 100 runs just 77 times, but drove in 100 runs 106 times. So, while their career numbers were similar, the underrated players did tend to have more big-run years and fewer big-RBI years.

The overrated group did play in slightly more World Series, 86 to 72. That’s divided over 50 players per group, so the difference may not be significant. Big Red Machine players show up on both lists. Morgan and Griffey are underrated; Rose, Concepcion, and Bench are overrated.

Then again, I just counted total World Series opportunities, as opposed to checking the individual players’ performances in those Series. Bill suggests that there may well be a World Series performance bias, particularly defensive performance. (Think Brooks Robinson, circa 1970.)

The New York/LA bias… How many players spent significant portions of their careers with either the Yankees, Dodgers, Mets, or NY Giants? I didn’t expect much, but the results surprised me: only 5 members of the overrated group were NY/LA players, as opposed to FIFTEEN underrated players. There is no such thing as a NY/LA bias, unless you want to argue for a reverse bias.

(Bill points out that the NY/LA bias may depend on what awards you look study. From what I can tell, in the contemporary awards – MVPs, All Star games, etc. – there is no such bias. The Hall of Fame is another story... As Bill puts it, “the place is swarming with New Yorkers.”)

Park factors… I looked at AIR, a stat on Baseball-Reference.com. It is a factor which takes into account both park and league. A player with an AIR of 100 played in a run environment which was average for baseball history. This isn’t the perfect stat, because you could play in a hitter’s park in a pitcher’s league and come out average, but I don’t have the time to calculate actual park factors for every player. Anyway… There is a small difference between the two groups. The overrated group had an AIR of 99.5, while the underrated group was at 97.7.

The most pronounced difference, besides secondary average, was positional. 30 of the 50 overrated players were catchers, second basemen, and shortstops. 31 of the 50 underrated players were outfielders, and 35 of the 50 underrated players were primarily on the left side of the defensive spectrum (1B, LF, RF, 3B). Well, here: 

 
Looking at secondary average another way, the overrated group had a bat:sec avg. ratio of 1.20. The underrated group’s ratio was 0.82.

The overrated group had 67.74 MVP shares, 419 All Star games, 188 Gold Gloves, and 68 Silver Sluggers. The underrated group had 26.63 MVP shares, 137 All Star games, 27 Gold Gloves, and 16 Silver Sluggers. 13 of the 50 overrated players are in the Hall of Fame; 4 of the 50 underrated players are in the Hall. Yet the overrated group earned just 2155 points of value, and the underrated group earned 4020.

The stereotypical overrated player, then, is a light-hitting middle infielder with a good glove. They’re a dime a dozen: Richardson, Mazeroski, Nellie Fox, Kessinger, Bowa, Aparicio, Eddie Miller, Ozzie Smith, Dick Groat… Bill once wrote somewhere that Lou Brock is the best of a type of player that he doesn’t like. Brock himself may have been a justifiable Hall of Famer, but his type of player is not Bill’s cup of tea. It’s the same with Ozzie and the overrated infielders. I don’t have a problem with Ozzie in the Hall, but he’s just the best example of a seriously overrated group.

The stereotypical underrated player is an outfielder or first baseman who draws walks and either hits homers (Frank Howard, Jim Thome, Jack Clark) or steals bases (Rickey, Raines) or both (Bobby Bonds, Bobby Abreu, Eric Davis).

There are guys who don’t fit. Ripken is overrated not because he’s a shortstop but because of the Streak, which led to his absurd 17 All Star starts. (I know I pointed this out in the last article, but nobody else in history has more than 15 All Star starts. Not Mays or Aaron or Musial or anyone else. Ripken was good, but he can’t hold a candle to those guys.) Ernie Banks is overrated because, while he was a genuine superstar as a shortstop, he kept getting rewarded for that when he was a below-average first baseman. Willie Davis was underrated, but he had the numbers usually associated with overrated players –.279 batting average, .207 secondary. I guess it’s the park factor (and Bill points out that people thought Davis had issues with his attitude and work ethic). And Ken Griffey Sr. - .296 batting, .250 secondary, played for a dynasty, then went to New York, but he’s still one of the top 50 underrated. I suppose he got lost amid the stars in Cincinnati.

In the comments section of the earlier article, there were some issues raised that I’ll address here. I responded there, but I don’t know how many of you read the comments... Anyway, a reader named Danny asked about Joe DiMaggio, commenting that he always thought DiMaggio was overrated. In fact, DiMaggio rates about even – 214 value points, 222 award. In terms of value, he’s the 7th-best player in the study, even with Joe Morgan and just ahead of Frank Robinson and Mike Schmidt. His 222 award points are based on 5.43 MVP shares, 13 All Star games, and 9 AS starts.

DiMaggio may well be overrated today, but in his own time, he was rated about right. Ted Williams had 276 award points, Mantle 257, Musial 311, Yogi 205... in that context, DiMaggio’s 222 is very reasonable. Ripken and Brooks Robinson actually were awarded more than DiMaggio, which just illustrates how overrated they both were.

Of course, I’ve limited this study to six awards, and DiMaggio didn’t have a chance to win three of them (Rookie of the Year, Gold Gloves, and Silver Sluggers). If we included Sporting News awards, magazine covers, published biographies, and Simon and Garfunkel songs, DiMaggio may well come out more overrated. I would love to either do or see a study that did include some of those things. The Sporting News and Sports Illustrated archives are all digitized now, and you can view them for free, so it’d be relatively easy to go into those archives and count the covers.

Moving on... A reader named Mike commented that my counting Gold Gloves, which are strictly defensive awards, may have unjustly overrated defensive specialists. I can understand the logic, but that isn’t what’s happening. I gave Gold Gloves a very, very low weight, just 1.5 points per award. So Brooks Robinson, who had a record 16 Gold Gloves, only got 24 points for them. Brooks had 223 total award points, so the Gold Gloves accounted for less than 11% of his total. Aparicio is the same. Bobby Richardson is actually a little lower. Ozzie’s Gold Gloves are less than 13% of his total.

The problem isn’t the Gold Gloves; it’s that these defensive specialists were disproportionately awarded for their fielding. They didn’t just win Gold Gloves; they were elected to All Star games and got MVP votes. Nellie Fox, for instance, got 2.42 MVP shares. That’s more than Tony Gwynn or Derek Jeter or Carl Yastrzemski, and almost as many as Sammy Sosa and Rickey Henderson. Brooks Robinson was even higher, at 3.69, which is more than all but 13 players in history.

And I don’t buy the explanation that Win Shares seriously undervalues defensive specialists. Most of these guys have OPS+ figures in the 80s. They really are easy to find. Yet they’re often awarded more than players who are far better. It makes the most sense when you do player-by-player comparisons. For instance, Aparicio has the same number of award points as Barry Larkin, Carlton Fisk, and Willie Stargell. Bobby Richardson is even with Tim Raines and Alan Trammell. Mazeroski is just ahead of Robin Yount and Larry Doby. Larry Bowa is dead even with Bert Campaneris and Alvin Dark, but both Campy and Dark were far better players than Bowa. And you can’t use the position excuse here, since they’re all shortstops. Frank Malzone and Don Kessinger are in the same range, both significantly inferior to Dark and Campaneris.