The 10 most under-appreciated players of the 1980s: #10 Dwight Evans

Dwight Evans is the biggest star on our countdown. On the one hand, it seems like he couldn't be under-appreciated--he was a 3-time All-Star, got MVP votes in 5 different seasons, and topped 10% of the vote for the Hall of Fame in one of his years of eligibility.

But here's the deal about Evans--he had megastar talent and performance and never got credit for it.









Here are the top OPS+ values in the 1980s for players with at least 4000 plate appearances:

Rk	Player	OPS+	PA
1	Mike Schmidt	153	5556
2	Wade Boggs	150	5371
3	George Brett	150	5381
4	Pedro Guerrero	148	4858
5	Jack Clark	144	5021
6	Don Mattingly	144	4422
7	Eddie Murray	141	6437
8	Dwight Evans	137	6371
9	Rickey Henderson	137	6206
10	Robin Yount	135	6357
11	Dave Winfield	135	5597

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/8/2012.

Evans was right there with the best players of the era. However, he was overshadowed on his own team. In his early career, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, and Fred Lynn got more attention. Rice continued to get more attention from fans during the early 1980s, and then Wade Boggs became the team's offensive star in the mid 1980s. Toward the end of Evans' time with the team, Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell were in the spotlight.

The card is from Fleer's 1985 set, #158. The Red Sox cards from that set look amazing, thanks to the simply red and gray color scheme. What the heck is Evans' swinging in that photo? Some sort of warm-up bat I presume.

The stats on the back are impressive...in fact for the 1980s, Evans' rankings were as follows: runs (3rd), RBI (4th), HR (4th), extra-base hits (1st), total bases (5th), and times on base (2nd).