The 10 most under-appreciated players of the 1990s: #2 Kenny Lofton

Kenny Lofton is #2 on our countdown.

So most of us think Lofton is pretty good. He played 17 seasons and had a 107 OPS+ over a ton of plate appearances.

But those number sell short just how good Lofton was.











Let's start with defense. Lofton put up 11.5 dWAR over his career. Over 1992-1999, he had 11.3 dWAR alone. Here are the most fielding runs in baseball over that period:

Rk	Player	Sean Smith of BaseballProjection.com">Rfield	Age	Pos	Tm
1	Robin Ventura	119	24-31	*5/36D	CHW-NYM
2	Ivan Rodriguez	114	20-27	*2/D	TEX
3	Kenny Lofton	109	25-32	*8/D	CLE-ATL
4	Brian Jordan	100	25-32	*98/7D35	STL-ATL
5	Andruw Jones	99	19-22	*89/7	ATL
6	Sammy Sosa	98	23-30	*98	CHC
7	Luis Gonzalez	92	24-31	*7/D83	HOU-TOT-CHC-DET-ARI
8	John Valentin	80	25-32	*65/4D	BOS
9	Mark Lemke	71	26-32	*4/5	ATL-BOS
10	Royce Clayton	69	22-29	*6/5	SFG-STL-TOT-TEX

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/19/2012.

Lofton was simply one of the best defenders to ever play.

With his defensive contributions, Lofton's career WAR was 65.3, which is 80th among position players.

Here are all the players since 1901 to average at least 0.16 runs scored per plate appearance, minimum 8000 PAs:

Rk		PA	R
1	Jeff Bagwell	9431	1517
2	Barry Bonds	12606	2227
3	Ty Cobb	13068	2246
4	Kiki Cuyler	8098	1305
5	Jimmie Foxx	9670	1751
6	Lou Gehrig	9660	1888
7	Charlie Gehringer	10237	1774
8	Rickey Henderson	13346	2295
9	Rogers Hornsby	9475	1579
10	Kenny Lofton	9234	1528
11	Mickey Mantle	9909	1676
12	Willie Mays	12493	2062
13	Mel Ott	11337	1859
14	Alex Rodriguez	10634	1824
15	Babe Ruth	10617	2174
16	Larry Walker	8030	1355
17	Ted Williams	9791	1798

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/19/2012.

Pretty fine group, huh? Granted, Lofton benefits from playing during a high-offense era, but notice that there are just a few contemporaries of his.

The card is 1992 Pinnacle #582. It's quite striking since it's almost all black, but it's a nice card. It's got an action photo on the front and a nice posed shot on the back. It's short on decent stats, though...