Post by klawrencio79 on May 22, 2018 16:17:21 GMT
It came up in yesterday's trivial thread from FrankSobotka about underrated/underappreciated players in today's game. Sports Illustrated had the below column about it.
What do you guys think?
ROUNDTABLE: WHO IS THE MOST UNDERAPPRECIATED PLAYER IN THE GAME TODAY?
Emma Baccellieri: It’s weird to a call a player underappreciated when he’s received MVP votes in both of his full seasons in the majors. But JosĂ© RamĂrez deserves more appreciation than he gets!
Maybe that's because he's not quite as flashy as teammate Francisco Lindor, who shares the infield with him and is roughly the same age, or perhaps because his prospect hype didn't run too high and his major-league debut wasn't enough to blow anyone away. Regardless, he flies under the radar as a bona fide star-quality player—but make no mistake, that's exactly what he is. RamĂrez has been enjoying a pretty sweet start to the season, hitting .302/.392/.615 to secure a space among baseball's 10-best hitters by OPS+ this year. He plays a solid third base, and he's versatile, too: He handled himself well moving over to second in 2016 and even to the outfield in 2017.
And perhaps the scariest thing? He's gotten better every year, with no signs of tapering off.
Gabriel Baumgaertner: Freddie Freeman gets the nod over José Ramirez simply because he's been at it longer. Justin Turner finally received his due recognition last season during the Dodgers' World Series run, so the honor is now bestowed on Freeman, who's been near-brilliant since his age-23 season. Here he is compared to Carl Yastrzemski from their fourth to their ninth big league seasons.
Freeman: 746 games, .300/.394/.520, 130 HR, 449 RBI, 149 OPS+
Yastrzemski: 924 games, .293/.390/.507, 158 HR, 525 RBI, 149 OPS+
The one knock on Freeman is that some feel he doesn't hit for enough power for a first baseman. He hit 62 home runs in his age-26 and age-27 seasons, one of which was interrupted because of injury. Prince Fielder hit a combined 70 home runs at those ages, and he played two full seasons. Freeman's got it all, and maybe the Braves' Cinderella run to the NL East might finally get him the respect he deserves.
Michael Beller: Suarez is the most underappreciated player in the league.
Which Suarez? Exactly my point. The fact that you don’t automatically read that as Eugenio Suarez is all the proof I need. Suarez hasn’t put up gaudy numbers in a single season, and he has spent most of his career on terrible Reds teams, leading his production to go largely unnoticed. Suarez enters play Monday hitting .274/.356/.549 with seven homers, eight doubles and 32 RBI in 132 plate appearances.
It takes more than one good season to develop an appreciation gap. Suarez flashed what he could do in 2015, slashing .280/.315/.446 with 13 homers. In 2016, his first full season, he belted 21 homers while playing all but three games for the Reds. Everything came together for Suarez last season. He slashed .260/.367/.461 with 26 homers, 25 doubles and 82 RBI, marking himself as a key player in the Reds rebuild in his age-25 season. Suarez clearly has taken another step this year, and yet, still too few fans outside Cincinnati even know who he is, let alone appreciate his talents.
Jack Dickey: Bring on the charges of homerism: it’s Jacob deGrom. I am perpetually confounded by how little attention deGrom rates from the baseball media. Since the start of the 2014 season, the year he won NL Rookie of the Year, only nine pitchers have accumulated more WAR: Kluber, Scherzer, Kershaw, Sale, Greinke, Arrieta, Cueto, Hamels, and Verlander. If you told baseball fans to guess which Met pitcher ranks 10th on that list, they’d probably offer up deGrom’s teammate Noah Syndergaard or ex-teammate Matt Harvey, before the Amazins’ lean, converted-shortstop ace.
The thing is, deGrom must want it this way. After the 2017 season, he sheared his signature shoulder-length locks, stripping him of a rare distinctive trait. He’s hardly on social media, and I can’t for the life of me remember a thing he’s ever said to the press. Apparently he likes fast food. So do a lot of people. But most of them can’t pitch like he can.
Connor Grossman: Is Shohei Ohtani even the biggest story in Los Angeles after the Dodgers’ bizarre implosion? I can’t help but fantasize about the enormity of each Ohtani start had he signed with the Yankees, or the fanfare that would surround John Sterling’s decision to call Ohtani’s at-bats entirely in Japanese. Back to reality: Ohtani is both hitting and pitching at an elite level—drawing one of the few, if not the only, genuine comparisons to Babe Ruth—and he struggles to draw the daily attention (at least in North America) his performances should be generating. Perhaps a spirited run through the postseason will change things. Unfortunately we’re months away from that, and a playoff berth is no guarantee for the Angels.
Jon Tayler: That we as a society haven’t spent the last two or three years building statues of Mike Trout around the country, or naming expensive public works after him, or that there isn’t a popular religion founded on his works, is insanely at odds with the fact that he’s on pace to have the best individual season in major league history. MLB could re-name the MVP trophy after Trout—hell, they could re-name every trophy after Trout—and it still wouldn’t feel like he gets his proper due. I know that his personality is best described as “404 File Not Found,” or that he plays a solid two-thirds of his season way past the East Coast’s bedtime. To that I give a firm “whatever.” Trout deserves more love and more adulation.
Tom Verducci: Jose Abreu, White Sox. The guy led the league last year in total bases and didn’t even make the All-Star team. Here’s the entire list of players who began their career with four straight seasons with at least 25 homers, 100 RBI and .820 OPS: Joe DiMaggio (1936-39), Albert Pujols (2001-04) and Abreu (2014-17).
He rarely takes a day off and is as reliable as they come. Since he broke into the big leagues only Nolan Arenado and Mike Trout have more extra-base hits, only Jose Altuve and Charlie Blackmon have more hits, and only Arenado has more total bases—and yet Abreu, slogging through a fifth straight losing season with the White Sox, rarely gets mentioned among the best hitters in the game.
What do you guys think?
ROUNDTABLE: WHO IS THE MOST UNDERAPPRECIATED PLAYER IN THE GAME TODAY?
Emma Baccellieri: It’s weird to a call a player underappreciated when he’s received MVP votes in both of his full seasons in the majors. But JosĂ© RamĂrez deserves more appreciation than he gets!
Maybe that's because he's not quite as flashy as teammate Francisco Lindor, who shares the infield with him and is roughly the same age, or perhaps because his prospect hype didn't run too high and his major-league debut wasn't enough to blow anyone away. Regardless, he flies under the radar as a bona fide star-quality player—but make no mistake, that's exactly what he is. RamĂrez has been enjoying a pretty sweet start to the season, hitting .302/.392/.615 to secure a space among baseball's 10-best hitters by OPS+ this year. He plays a solid third base, and he's versatile, too: He handled himself well moving over to second in 2016 and even to the outfield in 2017.
And perhaps the scariest thing? He's gotten better every year, with no signs of tapering off.
Gabriel Baumgaertner: Freddie Freeman gets the nod over José Ramirez simply because he's been at it longer. Justin Turner finally received his due recognition last season during the Dodgers' World Series run, so the honor is now bestowed on Freeman, who's been near-brilliant since his age-23 season. Here he is compared to Carl Yastrzemski from their fourth to their ninth big league seasons.
Freeman: 746 games, .300/.394/.520, 130 HR, 449 RBI, 149 OPS+
Yastrzemski: 924 games, .293/.390/.507, 158 HR, 525 RBI, 149 OPS+
The one knock on Freeman is that some feel he doesn't hit for enough power for a first baseman. He hit 62 home runs in his age-26 and age-27 seasons, one of which was interrupted because of injury. Prince Fielder hit a combined 70 home runs at those ages, and he played two full seasons. Freeman's got it all, and maybe the Braves' Cinderella run to the NL East might finally get him the respect he deserves.
Michael Beller: Suarez is the most underappreciated player in the league.
Which Suarez? Exactly my point. The fact that you don’t automatically read that as Eugenio Suarez is all the proof I need. Suarez hasn’t put up gaudy numbers in a single season, and he has spent most of his career on terrible Reds teams, leading his production to go largely unnoticed. Suarez enters play Monday hitting .274/.356/.549 with seven homers, eight doubles and 32 RBI in 132 plate appearances.
It takes more than one good season to develop an appreciation gap. Suarez flashed what he could do in 2015, slashing .280/.315/.446 with 13 homers. In 2016, his first full season, he belted 21 homers while playing all but three games for the Reds. Everything came together for Suarez last season. He slashed .260/.367/.461 with 26 homers, 25 doubles and 82 RBI, marking himself as a key player in the Reds rebuild in his age-25 season. Suarez clearly has taken another step this year, and yet, still too few fans outside Cincinnati even know who he is, let alone appreciate his talents.
Jack Dickey: Bring on the charges of homerism: it’s Jacob deGrom. I am perpetually confounded by how little attention deGrom rates from the baseball media. Since the start of the 2014 season, the year he won NL Rookie of the Year, only nine pitchers have accumulated more WAR: Kluber, Scherzer, Kershaw, Sale, Greinke, Arrieta, Cueto, Hamels, and Verlander. If you told baseball fans to guess which Met pitcher ranks 10th on that list, they’d probably offer up deGrom’s teammate Noah Syndergaard or ex-teammate Matt Harvey, before the Amazins’ lean, converted-shortstop ace.
The thing is, deGrom must want it this way. After the 2017 season, he sheared his signature shoulder-length locks, stripping him of a rare distinctive trait. He’s hardly on social media, and I can’t for the life of me remember a thing he’s ever said to the press. Apparently he likes fast food. So do a lot of people. But most of them can’t pitch like he can.
Connor Grossman: Is Shohei Ohtani even the biggest story in Los Angeles after the Dodgers’ bizarre implosion? I can’t help but fantasize about the enormity of each Ohtani start had he signed with the Yankees, or the fanfare that would surround John Sterling’s decision to call Ohtani’s at-bats entirely in Japanese. Back to reality: Ohtani is both hitting and pitching at an elite level—drawing one of the few, if not the only, genuine comparisons to Babe Ruth—and he struggles to draw the daily attention (at least in North America) his performances should be generating. Perhaps a spirited run through the postseason will change things. Unfortunately we’re months away from that, and a playoff berth is no guarantee for the Angels.
Jon Tayler: That we as a society haven’t spent the last two or three years building statues of Mike Trout around the country, or naming expensive public works after him, or that there isn’t a popular religion founded on his works, is insanely at odds with the fact that he’s on pace to have the best individual season in major league history. MLB could re-name the MVP trophy after Trout—hell, they could re-name every trophy after Trout—and it still wouldn’t feel like he gets his proper due. I know that his personality is best described as “404 File Not Found,” or that he plays a solid two-thirds of his season way past the East Coast’s bedtime. To that I give a firm “whatever.” Trout deserves more love and more adulation.
Tom Verducci: Jose Abreu, White Sox. The guy led the league last year in total bases and didn’t even make the All-Star team. Here’s the entire list of players who began their career with four straight seasons with at least 25 homers, 100 RBI and .820 OPS: Joe DiMaggio (1936-39), Albert Pujols (2001-04) and Abreu (2014-17).
He rarely takes a day off and is as reliable as they come. Since he broke into the big leagues only Nolan Arenado and Mike Trout have more extra-base hits, only Jose Altuve and Charlie Blackmon have more hits, and only Arenado has more total bases—and yet Abreu, slogging through a fifth straight losing season with the White Sox, rarely gets mentioned among the best hitters in the game.