(This is a re-imagining of Raphy's excellent concept of using Baseball-Reference.com's EloRater as a fairly objective measure of which players are overrated and underrated. He deserves much of the credit for this post, plus Sky Kalkman gets a nod for helpful suggestions.)
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Joe DiMaggio giving his Hall of Fame induction speech in 1955, while
Marilyn Monroe looks on from a window above / Icon SMI |
Having just completed two series of posts on under-appreciated players, it's become clear to me that it's very tough to define "overrated" and "underrated" not only because each individual has a unique perspective, but also because we can't really know what everyone else thinks.
How can we judge a player's perceived value in comparison to his real value? It's not easy, but this study attempts to find a way of doing that.
I'm not going to bore you with a long explanation of the methods used. You can
read that here if you wish. The basic idea is this:
- Start with a player's actual career WAR, taken from Baseball-Reference.com (so we call it bWAR).
- Look up the player's rank on B-R's EloRater, which uses a pretty neat algorithm for allowing thousands of site users to rank players.
- Calculate an expected career WAR (or eWAR) based on that player's EloRater ranking (which, in brief, is done by averaging the career WARs of the players surrounding that guy on the EloRater.)
- Find players for whom the difference, bWAR - eWAR, is the largest. A big positive value means the player is underrated while a big negative means the player is overrated.
Now, before we move onto the actual list, let's talk for a moment about what it means to be overrated in this study. It does not mean that the player was not very good. The vast majority of the players on the overrated list were really good. It simply means that there is a discrepancy between their EloRater ranking and bWAR. As near as I can tell, there are numerous reasons why this happens:
- The player is given "extra credit" in the EloRater rankings due to missed time. Example: Ted Williams missing time for war service
- The player is given "extra credit" in the EloRater rankings for post-season performance, which of course is not factored into bWAR. Example: Joe Carter in the 1993 World Series
- The player is not appropriately judged for negative defensive contributions that hurt his bWAR. Example: Jermaine Dye
- The player is a fan favorite who is given more credit than he deserves in the EloRater rankings. Example: Don Mattingly
- The player is given "extra credit" for efforts as a manager or other non-playing role. Example: Lou Piniella
- The player is given extra credit to make up for unfair blame he received for something else. Example: Bill Buckner
- The player has gotten a higher EloRater ranking on the strength of 1 or 2 really strong seasons that are not representative of his career. Example: George Bell
- The player played in a particularly favorable home ballpark: Example: Vinny Castilla
So as you read the list below, keep in mind that it's generated from these two data sets--the EloRater and bWAR--and that as with any stats, they have their limitations.
Also, another way to think about this is a player's popularity and reputation vs. his actual performance. Many of the guys are on the overrated list because they are beloved, even more than their stats suggest they should be.
