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

Click here to see the revised version of this. Mays slips from #1 to #2. Lou Whitaker is now number #1. 

To get a handle on these questions, I first compared career WAR and career MVP shares for a large group of players. In the first case I used WAR from Baseball Reference. In the second case I used WAR from Fangraphs (and only each player's seven best seasons).

They were everyone who had 5000+ PAs since 1931 (I excluded anyone who played more than half a season before 1931 because that was the first year of the baseball writers MVP award).

Then I included everyone who was in the top 200 in MVP shares (only position players). The lowest career WAR of anyone in that group was 17.3, belonging to Cecil Fielder. So I then also added in everyone who had 17.3+ WAR since 1931. Total players was 810.

Then I regressed MVP shares on WAR. A second order polynomial was a better fit than a straight line regression. Click here to see the scatter plot with trend line. Here is the regression equation

MVPShares = 0.0003*WARSquared + 0.011*WAR - 0.1198

Then I estimated each player's predicted MVP shares and found the difference. Click here to see the entire results. The 20 players with the most negative differences are listed below. Willie Mays had a career WAR of 155.9. So he was predicted by the equation to have 8.89 MVP shares but he only had 5.94. So his differential is a -2.95.

Rank	Player	Career WAR	Award Shares	Pred	Diff
1	Willie Mays	155.9	5.94	8.89	-2.95
2	Rickey Henderson	110.6	2.46	4.77	-2.31
3	Lou Whitaker	74.8	0.21	2.38	-2.17
4	Wade Boggs	91	1.2	3.36	-2.16
5	Eddie Mathews	96.1	1.61	3.71	-2.10
6	Hank Aaron	142.3	5.45	7.52	-2.07
7	Willie Randolph	65.6	0.04	1.89	-1.85
8	Ozzie Smith	76.5	0.65	2.48	-1.83
9	Bobby Grich	71	0.43	2.17	-1.74
10	Buddy Bell	66	0.18	1.91	-1.73
11	Willie Davis	60.8	0.1	1.66	-1.56
12	Scott Rolen	69.9	0.57	2.11	-1.54
13	Bobby Abreu	60.5	0.17	1.64	-1.47
14	Carl Yastrzemski	96	2.23	3.70	-1.47
15	Graig Nettles	67.9	0.56	2.01	-1.45
16	Kenny Lofton	67.9	0.58	2.01	-1.43
17	Chet Lemon	55.2	0	1.40	-1.40
18	Johnny Damon	56.4	0.07	1.45	-1.38
19	Darrell Evans	58.5	0.17	1.55	-1.38
20	Cal Ripken	95.5	2.31	3.67	-1.36

This approach is not perfect. Some players might have long careers and so they compile a high career WAR. But if they never have any great seasons, they might not get many MVP votes. Plus, it helps to play on contenders. But Mays had plenty of great seasons and played on many contenders. There is also the possibility that if there are other great players around compiling high WAR seasons, you won't do as well in the voting.

Now here are the players who got more MVP Shares than predicted.

Rank	Player	Career WAR	Award Shares	Pred	Diff
791	Cecil Fielder	17.3	1.67	0.16	1.51
792	Mike Piazza	59.2	3.16	1.58	1.58
793	Albert Belle	39.8	2.38	0.79	1.59
794	Harmon Killebrew	60.4	3.23	1.64	1.59
795	David Ortiz	44	2.6	0.94	1.66
796	Pedro Guerrero	34.4	2.3	0.61	1.69
797	George Bell	20.2	1.92	0.22	1.70
798	Steve Garvey	37.5	2.46	0.71	1.75
799	Willie Stargell	57.3	3.3	1.49	1.81
800	Roy Campanella	34.2	2.52	0.61	1.91
801	Juan Gonzalez	38.5	2.76	0.75	2.01
802	Jim Rice	47.3	3.15	1.07	2.08
803	Hank Greenberg	57.6	3.69	1.51	2.18
804	Ryan Howard	18.9	2.49	0.19	2.30
805	Yogi Berra	59.3	3.98	1.59	2.39
806	Dave Parker	39.9	3.19	0.80	2.39
807	Frank Thomas	73.6	4.79	2.31	2.48
808	Joe DiMaggio	78.3	5.45	2.58	2.87
809	Miguel Cabrera	54.7	4.25	1.38	2.87
810	Albert Pujols	92.9	6.9	3.49	3.41

Pujols got 3.49 more shares than predicted, making him the most overrated player by this measure.

Then, using data from Fangraphs, I found all the players who had 4000+ PAs since 1931 and found their WAR from their seven best seasons combined (each player's WAR in 1981 was increased by 50% while it was 40% for 1994-this is due to player strikes). Total players, 931. Click here to see the scatter plot and trend line. Again, a second degree polynomial was better than a straight line regression (if you look closely, the line slopes downward for very low WAR players, which should not make sense-but this is avoided with a sixth degree polynomial whose results are essentially the same, so I used the simpler one here). Here is the equation

MVPShares = 0.0018*WAR7Squared -  0.041*WAR7 + 0.2683

Here are the most underrated players. Boggs was actually number 1 in WAR 3 straight years while his team came if first twice. He was second in WAR 3 times. He reached the post season a total of six times. But the best he ever finished in the MVP voting was fourth. Mays was 117th here. Click here to see the entire results.

Rank	Name	WAR7	Award Shares	Pred	Diff
1	Wade Boggs	56.1	1.2	3.63	-2.43
2	Ron Santo	52.9	1.23	3.14	-1.91
3	Eddie Mathews	55.3	1.61	3.51	-1.90
4	Bobby Grich	46.15	0.43	2.21	-1.78
5	Rickey Henderson	59.55	2.46	4.21	-1.75
6	Chase Utley	46.7	0.73	2.28	-1.55
7	Arky Vaughan	50.2	1.23	2.75	-1.52
8	Scott Rolen	44.7	0.57	2.03	-1.46
9	Bobby Abreu	40.9	0.17	1.60	-1.43
10	Buddy Bell	40.65	0.18	1.58	-1.40
11	Brian Giles	40.4	0.2	1.55	-1.35
12	Andruw Jones	47.8	1.1	2.42	-1.32
13	Robin Ventura	39.9	0.26	1.50	-1.24
14	Chet Lemon	36.95	0	1.21	-1.21
15	Ron Cey	39.35	0.25	1.44	-1.19
16	Darrell Evans	38.3	0.17	1.34	-1.17
17	Jim Edmonds	45	0.9	2.07	-1.17
18	Kenny Lofton	42.24	0.58	1.75	-1.17
19	Carlos Beltran	43.8	0.76	1.93	-1.17
20	Graig Nettles	41.6	0.56	1.68	-1.12

Now the players who got more MVP shares than predicted

Rank	Name	WAR7	Award Shares	Pred	Diff
912	Barry Bonds	76.7	9.3	7.71	1.59
913	Brooks Robinson	45.1	3.69	2.08	1.61
914	Eddie Murray	41.1	3.33	1.62	1.71
915	Willie Stargell	40.7	3.3	1.58	1.72
916	George Bell	20.8	1.92	0.19	1.73
917	Hank Aaron	56.4	5.45	3.68	1.77
918	Pete Rose	43.4	3.68	1.88	1.80
919	Stan Musial	64.7	6.96	5.15	1.81
920	Jim Rice	38.2	3.15	1.33	1.82
921	David Ortiz	31.7	2.6	0.78	1.82
922	Steve Garvey	28.3	2.46	0.55	1.91
923	Dave Parker	36.9	3.19	1.21	1.98
924	Frank Robinson	50.8	4.84	2.83	2.01
925	Joe DiMaggio	54.6	5.45	3.40	2.05
926	Frank Thomas	49.7	4.79	2.68	2.11
927	Juan Gonzalez	27.2	2.76	0.48	2.28
928	Miguel Cabrera	44.1	4.25	1.96	2.29
929	Ryan Howard	20.6	2.49	0.19	2.30
930	Yogi Berra	40	3.98	1.51	2.47
931	Albert Pujols	58.9	6.9	4.10	2.80