Friday, January 6, 2023

Which players were underrated by both MVP votes and Hall of Fame Votes?

The links to the two relevant posts are given at the end of this post. Those links explain the regression method and have links to the complete rankings. The basic idea is that if a guy got fewer MVP shares or fewer Hall of Fame votes than expected based on his WAR, he was considered underrated.

Some players were very underrated in one measure but very overrated in the other. The MVP study had 810 players and the Hall of Fame study had 430. So the ranks are not quite comparable.

Table 1 shows how the 20 most underrated by the Hall of Fame measure ranked in the MVP measure.

Table 1

HOF Rank

Player

MVP Rank

1

Ron Santo

53

2

Ken Boyer

524

3

Bobby Grich

9

4

Duke Snider

620

5

Scott Rolen

11

6

Eddie Mathews

5

7

Dick Allen

624

8

Sal Bando

354

9

Richie Ashburn

24

10

Jim Wynn

46

11

Kenny Lofton

17

12

Cesar Cedeno

60

13

Jim Fregosi

101

14

Alan Trammell

56

15

Bobby Abreu

12

16

Graig Nettles

14

17

Buddy Bell

8

18

Keith Hernandez

707

19

Minnie Minoso

738

20

Bobby Bonds

163

 
The players in red are in the top 20 in both lists, so they could be considered very underrated.

Table 2 shows how the 20 most underrated by the MVP measure ranked in the Hall of Fame measure.

Table 2

MVP Rank

Player

HOF Rank

1

Lou Whitaker

30

2

Willie Mays

340

3

Wade Boggs

393

4

Rickey Henderson

392

5

Eddie Mathews

6

6

Willie Randolph

36

7

Ozzie Smith

426

8

Buddy Bell

17

9

Bobby Grich

3

10

Willie Davis

NA

11

Scott Rolen

5

12

Bobby Abreu

15

13

Chet Lemon

28

14

Graig Nettles

16

15

Johnny Damon

69

16

Darrell Evans

31

17

Kenny Lofton

11

18

Hank Aaron

390

19

Carl Yastrzemski

399

20

Tony Phillips

51

 

When I did the original posts back in 2014, Damon, Rolen & Abreu had not yet become eligible for the Hall of Fame. Since they have come up on the ballot after that, I estimated their predicted vote % and ranked them accordingly. Willie Davis never actually appeared on a Hall of Fame Ballot.

Here are the two original studies:

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

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

Update Jan. 9: Joe Posnanski recently came up with a top 10 list. See Baseball's Most Underrated Players Ever.

Five of the seven guys I have highlighted in red above made his top 10 (the guys who were in the top 20 of both of my studies). They were

Bobby Abreu
Buddy Bell
Bobby Grich
Kenny Lofton
Eddie Mathews

What about the other five on Posnanski's list? How did they do in both of my studies? In general, they were underrated in both.

Willie Davis was number 10 in my MVP vote study but did not have a rank in the Hall of Fame study since his name never actually appeared on the ballot. If we give him 0% his score would be -.22 since he would have been expected to get 22% of the vote. That would put him 21st in the Hall of Fame study.

Darrell Evans would be 32nd in the Hall of Fame study if we included Davis. He was 16th in the MVP study.

Lou Whitaker was first in the MVP study and 31st in the Hall of Fame study.

Dwight Evans was 47th in the Hall of Fame study and 54th in the MVP study

Keith Hernandez was 19th in the Hall of Fame study and was 707th in the MVP voting study (which means he did well in the MVP voting during his career).

The two guys among the seven who were in the top 20 of both my MVP study and my Hall of Fame study that are not in Joe Posnanski's top 10 are Scott Rolen and Craig Nettles.

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