Overrated players
SI put up a players’ poll a few weeks ago that I’ve been mulling over — they asked 187 Major Leaguers who the most overrated player is. Can you guess? Can you guess who the number one most overrated player in baseball is, according to baseball players? Here’s a hint: you’re wrong. He came in second.
The thing that strikes me the most about that poll is that, exactly as one should expect of a popular poll about "overratedness," it’s pretty much completely backwards. Now, before you get all persnickety with me, yes, I realise that "overrated" isn’t well defined. But still, here are the top five most overrated players according to this poll:
• J.D. Drew, RF, BOS
• Nick Swisher, RF, NYY
• Gary Matthews, Jr., CF, CIN
• Alex Rodriguez, 3B, NYY
• Joba Chamberlain, RP, NYY
J.D. Drew is probably the single most underrated player in baseball. He’s like a wall of liquid awesome, and nobody ever stops talking about how much he sucks. Drew was worth almost six wins last year — all by himself! — which is nearly MVP-calibre shit, but all you hear from anybody is how he’s a laggard and he doesn’t care and he has no grit or fire or balls. In what bizarro reality is J.D. Drew possibly overrated? He could play replacement-level ball and be underrated the way people talk about him.
Nick Swisher’s in almost the same boat. He’s a pretty dependable four-win-a-year player (yes, except for that one atrocious year with the Hose), and people barely even realise he exists. And when they do notice him, it’s usually just to dismiss him as a goofball who doesn’t take baseball seriously and doesn’t try very hard. Meanwhile, he’s on track to put up six wins this year.
Alex Rodriguez, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is one of the greatest players of all time. It’s utterly impossible that he’s overrated — unless you mean just right now. A-Rod’s been pretty smelly this year, due in no small part to age and injuries, and it looks like he might only be worth five wins instead of his customary eight to ten. Now, wait, you say; five wins is still pretty damn good. And you’re right. But A-Rod is still regarded in many circles as the game’s premier player, and he just isn’t anymore; he’s about a J.D. Drew- or Nick Swisher-level player now. So possibly a bit overrated, yeah.
Joba? Overrated? Everybody hates that guy, and a lot of his trouble has to do with the Yankees’ shitty defense — his xFIP is more than two runs better than his ERA, which says bad luck and bad defense. Sure, Joba isn’t as great as the 2007-era hype built him up to be, but nobody thinks he is, and certainly nobody’s saying he is. Mainly people are talking about what a gutless chokemaster he is, and he’s actually a pretty solid relief pitcher.
Gary Matthews, now — there’s an overrated player. Gary is, quite simply, a replacement-level player with mid-level star power. The fact that he’s still lurking around the majors — he’s in AAA at the moment (I think), but he’s been on a Major League roster for 65 PA this season — and still getting paid eleven million dollars this year for his trouble is proof of his overratedness. The Angels maybe can be forgiven; he was actually pretty good in 2006, when he was worth 3.4 WAR (which is to say: less than an average Nick Swisher year), and a good CF is valuable. Why the Mets agreed to pay him this much money, though, is cause for some amusement.
So how should we define "overrated," anyhow? It clearly isn’t just a synonym for "overpaid," since there’s definitely an anecdotal element to it, but overpaid does appear to be involved. I’d say the Yankees can be forgiven for A-Rod’s contract; when they signed it, following the 2007 season, he was legitimately the best player in the game, and had never missed significant playing time; they had no way of knowing he was going to start suffering chronic injuries. On the other hand, there’s no excuse for the money the Mets are paying Gary Matthews (or, I guess, the money the Reds are paying him; it’s not clear to me which team is paying how much of that $11.4M). So here is the list of the top five most overrated players in baseball, as overrated by me, using scientific methodology pioneered by me and also vetted by me:
5) A.J. Burnett, SP, NYY — Burnett is ridiculous: a two-win starting pitcher getting paid like a top-level talent ($16M/year). He misses a shitload of time, and throws juvenile temper-tantrums that cost his team bullpen innings and possibly actual wins. Burnett isn’t a bad player by any stretch of the imagination — he’s pretty similar in value to Jarrod Washburn, but, whereas nobody ever stops making fun of Washburn, people really think Burnett is something special.
4) David Eckstein, 2B, SDP — David Eckstein has value, certainly, and the Padres are getting a pretty good deal on him; they’re only paying him $1M, and he’s having a damn fine year. It’s mainly his defense, though; he doesn’t get on base (.326) and has no particular power (.354) — that is not an anomaly, either. Eckstein has never been able to hit. What gets him his spot on this list is that he’s the easy target for lazy sportswriters who want to write a glurge piece about hustle and grit and how that’s all so much more important than fucking numbers. It’s ridiculous — Eckstein has gotten MVP votes in two separate years, and has been an All-Star twice, despite not actually ever being very good. He also won a World Series MVP (though there is an argument to be made that he deserved it).
3) Ryan Howard, 1B, PHI — Ryan Howard won his MVP because he hit 58 home runs, which is a lot. Pujols was better. That notwithstanding, Howard is a good hitter, but not a truly elite hitter — not a $20M/year hitter like the Phillies are paying him to be. And his defense is pretty awful at the easiest position there is. Howard is pretty much a three-to-four win player, but he gets put on a pedestal and tarted up like he’s the second coming of Albert Pujols. Who isn’t even dead yet, for fuck’s sake.
Howard, 2009: 4.8 WAR, $15M
Pujols, 2009: 9.2 WAR, $14M
And that was the second-best year of Howard’s career. And he got a huge raise in the offseason.
2) Jamie Moyer, SP, PHI — All year long I’ve been hearing about how great Jamie Moyer is and how amazing it is that he’s still so effective at age 63. And I’m goddamn sick of it. Jamie Moyer is not still good. Jamie Moyer’s current 2010 WAR? 0. Jamie Moyer’s 2010 salary? $8M. Now, pitching being what it is, there’s some merit in paying eight million dollars for 200-or-so innings of 0 WAR left-handed pitching. But let’s face facts: Jamie Moyer is, at this point in his career, a replacement-level pitcher getting paid millions of dollars to start in the majors. It’s cool that he’s still pitching at 130, and you have to admit that it was pretty charming when he faced Starlin Castro and the announcers pointed out that, hey, Jamie Moyer was a five-year MLB veteran before Castro was born, but cute and charming do not equal good.
1) Randy Wolf, SP, MIL — One-upping the Phillies, here we see the Brewers paying almost $9M for a pitcher who is below replacement level, and nobody appears to have noticed that. All that hand-wringing in the offseason about how unreasonable it was for the Dodgers to let Wolf go, and he’s not even as good — not even close to as good — as any old AAA callup. Randy Wolf has thrown 128 innings this season, and has put up an ERA+ of 76, an xFIP of 5.19, and a WAR of -0.7. That is awful.
