Friday, July 13, 2018

Was Bobby Murcer one of the most underrated players of the '70s?

That is what someone said on Twitter today. But who underrated him? How do we measure that?

I have tried to estimate this before and links are provided below. If you read them and click on links to the complete rankings, Murcer does not appear to have been underrated.

Here I just looked at where he ranked in WAR among position players and in MVP shares among position players. Here are the WAR leaders from the 1970s using the Baseball Reference Play Index

WAR leaders of the 1970s.

Murcer is 38th.

I also copied and pasted all the MVP votes from 1970-1979 from both leagues into Excel and found the cumulative total for each player.  I took out any pitchers. Murcer is 36th, very close to his rank in WAR. So it seems that he was rated just about right by the MVP voters. He had three top 10 finishes (a 7th, a 5th and a 9th).


Name Share
Willie Stargell  3.16
Joe Morgan  2.99
Johnny Bench  2.67
Jim Rice  2.1
Steve Garvey  2.06
Reggie Jackson  2.05
Pete Rose  1.98
Dave Parker  1.97
George Foster  1.94
Rod Carew  1.7
Greg Luzinski  1.52
George Brett  1.51
Thurman Munson  1.5
Ken Singleton  1.41
Fred Lynn  1.4
Billy Williams  1.32
Sal Bando  1.32
Mike Schmidt  1.22
Joe Rudi  1.08
Don Baylor  1.04
Lou Brock  1.01
Bobby Bonds  1
Joe Torre  0.99
Reggie Smith  0.99
Dick Allen  0.98
Amos Otis  0.93
Brooks Robinson  0.81
Jeff Burroughs  0.79
John Mayberry  0.78
Frank Robinson  0.75
Hank Aaron  0.73
Boog Powell  0.72
Mickey Rivers  0.7
Ted Simmons  0.67
Tony Perez  0.67
Bobby Murcer  0.66

Was Willie Mays The Most Underrated Player In History? Or Was It Wade Boggs? Is Albert Pujols The Most Overrated? (Revised)

Using A Player's WAR To Predict First Year Hall Of Fame Vote Percentage (and possibly estimate "underratedness")

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