The Top 25 Most Underrated Players in Baseball History

In his book, "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract," Bill James described Darrell Evans as "probably the most underrated player in baseball history."

James supported his argument by pointing out that while Evans had a low batting average (.248), he had a very high "secondary average," which is a statistic Bill James uses to measure, well, everything else.

Whatever. I'll take his word for it.

So in honor of Bill James and the underrated baseball player poster-boy Darrell Evans, I present the list of the 25 most underrated players in baseball history.

25. Dick Allen

Dick Allen leads the All-Star team of players with immense talent and immense egos.

Whether Allen's problems, chiefly in Philadelphia, were caused by his own personality or by the caustic relationship Phillies fans have with their hometown stars is up for debate, but Allen's baseball abilities are not.

Allen finished with the 19th best OPS+ of all time, tied with Willie Mays and ahead of Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Manny Ramirez, Frank Robinson, and Honus Wagner.

24. Bobby Bonds

Bobby Bonds is known for being the father of Barry Bonds. What he should be known for is being one of the most lethal power-speed players of all time.

Bobby is one of six (soon to be seven) players ever to finish his career with 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, and as a leadoff hitter had tremendous power and on-base abilities.

23. Brian Giles

Brian Giles has all the qualities that make a player underrated: he played in bad markets (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, San Diego), he had a short career (15 seasons after being stuck in a crowded Cleveland system until the age of 26), and his finest quality was his ability to take walks and not strike out.

He's the type of player that people who like OPS love, and the type of player that home run/RBI guys don't even see.

22. Lefty Gomez

If there had been a Cy Young Award in the American League in the 1930s, only two players would have won it: Lefty Gomez twice and Lefty Grove every other season.

Gomez won two Triple Crowns—1934 and 1937—and led the AL in strikeouts three times, while finishing with a .649 career winning percentage.

21. Addie Joss

We're all familiar with Sandy Koufax's story—he was forced to retire from Major League Baseball in his prime while dominating the National League, due to debilitating injuries to his shoulder and elbow.

What we aren't so familiar with is Addie Joss' story—at the age of 30, 13 games into the 1910 season, Joss freakin' died from tubercular meningitis.

Joss's career numbers are strikingly similar to Koufax's, but we don't hear Addie's name nearly as much as we do Sandy's.

20. Ted Simmons

Ted Simmons was a contemporary of Carlton Fisk, and the two had very similar career numbers.

Unfortunately, Carlton had the more storied career, and as a result he walked into the Hall of Fame easily while Simmons didn't sniff it.

All Simmons did during his career was earn a World Series trip with the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, catch three Cy Young winners (Vukovich, Fingers, Gibson), and collect 1,389 RBI.

19. Ken Singleton

I wonder if Ken Singleton cries himself to sleep every night now that Jim Rice is in the Hall of Fame.

The Jim Rice vs. Ken Singleton comparison is one of subjective value vs. objective value. Rice hit lots of home runs and drove in lots of runs, two things he probably wouldn't have been successful at in a league-average park or in a league-average lineup.

Singleton got on base, had home run and doubles power, scored runs, and drove in runs about equally, but he didn't strikeout a ton or hit into a ton of double plays.

18. Gene Tenace

Gene Tenace was a catcher/first baseman with the Oakland A's team that won three World Series Championships from 1972 to 1974.

He was also an on-base machine—despite a .241 career batting average, he finished with a .388 on-base percentage. He took tons of walks, hit for not—inconsiderable power, and had a great 136 OPS+.

And he is largely a footnote in history.

17. Dave Steib

Baseball talkers like to point to Jack Morris as the best AL pitcher of the 1980s. While he may have the most wins in the decade, Dave Steib was the better pitcher during the period in which Morris and Steib were contemporaries.

One of the most unbelievable feats in baseball history has to be Dave Stieb’s two consecutive starts with would-be no-hitters broken up with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Those were his final two starts of the 1988 season and made up two of three consecutive shutouts to end the year. Simply unbelievable. He also had a perfect game broken up with two outs in the ninth as well.

16. Carlos Zambrano

Carlos Zambrano's career represents startling success in a place where few other pitchers have succeeded: Wrigley Field.

Name the top five pitchers in the history of Wrigley Field. Mordecai Brown never played there. Greg Maddux had his best years in Atlanta. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior went cablooie there.

You've got Ferguson Jenkins, and you've got Carlos Zambrano.

If he'd been pitching in Los Angeles or San Francisco all this time, he'd have at least a Cy Young Award if not two.

15. Dave Concepcion

Concepcion is on this list for two reasons:

1) Everyone else on the Big Red Machine is in the Hall of Fame, and he isn't.

2) Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame, and he isn't.

14. Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson must be one of the Men in Black, because he has simply been wiped from the record books. It's as if he never existed.

A seven time All-Star from 1933 to 1945, Johnson debuted with the Athletics at the age of 27 despite hitting 51 home runs with a .330-plus batting average over the 1931 and 1932 seasons with Portland of the Pacific Coast League.

For his career, in only 13 seasons he had over 1,200 runs and 2,000 hits, 396 doubles, 95 triples, 288 home runs, 1,283 RBI, and a .296/.393/.506 rate stat line.

13. Tim Raines

Who is the greatest leadoff man in the history of baseball?

Easy, Rickey Henderson.

Who is the second greatest leadoff man in the history of baseball?

A very strong case could be made for Raines.

Raines was an almost exact contemporary of Henderson's, and Henderson's shadow was large. But Raines had a phenomenal .385 on-base percentage (seriously, look up guys like Willie Wilson, Vince Coleman, and Otis Nixon to see how Raines compares), 808 stolen bases, 1,571 runs, and an .810 OPS.

I'm not saying he definitely should be in the Hall of Fame, but any consideration at all would have been nice.

12. Dazzy Vance

Led the league in ERA three times, wins twice, and strikeouts seven times. Vance was THE pitcher in the National League in the 1920s, winning the Triple Crown in 1924 and is largely a footnote in baseball history.

11. Omar Vizquel

As far as I can tell, he did everything Ozzie Smith did.

Is he headed to the Hall of Fame?

10. Frank Howard

Put him on the "Guys Who Would Have Hit 800 Home Runs if They'd Played in the 1990s" All-Star team.

Howard had a 142 OPS+ for his career. That ties him with Chipper Jones, Eddie Collins, Cap Anson, and Mike Piazza, and puts him ahead of Ryan Howard, Babe Herman, Todd Helton, Prince Fielder, and Gary Sheffield.

His numbers are also pretty favorable to Jim Rice's despite the fact that he didn't have the luxury of playing in Fenway Park. In 1962, when he hit 31 home runs for the Dodgers, he hit 18 on the road compared to 13 at home.

9. Ron Santo

He's a third baseman. In 15 seasons (pre-Steroid Era mind you) he had 342 home runs, 1,331 RBI, 1,138 runs scored, a 125 OPS+, and five Gold Gloves.

This isn't a Hall of Famer?

8. Rube Waddell

The Greatest Strikeout Pitchers of All Time: Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Walter Johnson, and Rube Waddell.

Waddell is one of 18 pitchers post-1901 to strike out 300 batters, the first person to do it twice, and held the record for strikeouts in a season with 349 in 1904 which lasted for over 60 years until Sandy Koufax broke it in 1965.

Waddell led his league in strikeouts six years in a row.

7. Shoeless Joe Jackson

Shoeless Joe Jackson wasn't kicked out of baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series, but for being associated with people who were throwing the 1919 World Series.

As a result, this is all we remember him for.

What we should be remembering him for is his 170 OPS+ and .356 batting average, which made him, at the time, every bit the equal of Ty Cobb.

Jackson got kicked out of baseball at the age of 30, right before the 1921 baseball season. A star of the deadball era, it appears as though Jackson would have been tremendous in the coming liveball era, and would have been considered one of the all time greats.

6. Edgar Martinez

Edgar was a career designated hitter, and some people will never forgive that, but he was also one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time.

He finished his career with a .312/.418/.515, which makes him one of only 18 players in baseball history to finish their career with a batting average over .300, an on-base percentage over .400, and a slugging percentage over .500.

He also won two batting titles and finished his career with 1,200 runs, 1,200 RBI, and 500 doubles.

5. Mike Piazza

Mike Piazza is generally considered the greatest hitting catcher of all time, and he will one day be in the Hall of Fame.

What most people don't realize is that he may have been one of the top three or four hitters of the last 20 years.

Piazza spent his career playing in two of the most severe pitchers' parks in the National League. For his career, he hit 37 more home runs on the road, hit .320 on the road compared to .294 at home, and had a .960 OPS on the road compared to .880 at home.

If he'd spent his career playing for the Cubs, Red Sox, Rockies, or Rangers, he'd look like one of the greatest hitters of all time.

4. Bill Dickey

Generally speaking, the "Greatest Catcher of All Time" debate usually comes down to "Bench or Berra." I'm not sure that either of them was better than Dickey.

But whether they were or not, Dickey certainly needs to be in the conversation.

3. Tris Speaker

When recalling the greatest outfielders of all time, many people seem to skip right over him when listing chronologically Cobb, Ruth, Williams, Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Bonds, and Ramirez.

Speaker is generally considered one of the greatest defensive center fielders of all time, but he was an incredible hitter, too.

He is the all-time leader in doubles, and he finished with 1,882 runs scored, 3,514 hits, and 1,529 RBI. Plus, his .345 lifetime batting average is better than Williams, Ruth, Sisler, Gwynn, Career, and Boggs.

2. Lefty Grove

For some reason, there are still people out there who aren't giving Grove his due. There are two reasons for this:

First: he debuted with the A's very late because his minor league team's owner wouldn't let him go. Grove was 96-34 from the age of 21 to 24 with Baltimore of the International League.

Second: he had a 3.06 ERA in the most hitter-friendly era in baseball history, which masks the fact that he was one of the most dominant pitchers of all time. He led the league ERA nine times, and his 148 ERA+ is the third best all time.

1. Mike Schmidt

Mike Schmidt is probably one of the top ten players of all time, and almost no one knows it.

Schmidt came along at the end of Brooks Robinson's career, so he was overshadowed by the greatest defensive third basemen in baseball history. He won 10 Gold Gloves at a time when Brooks Robinson was the standard bearer with 16.

Hitting in the 1970s and 1980s, he was robbed of home runs he would have hit if he'd been the product of another era. For example: he led the National League in home runs with less than 40 a remarkable six times.

And yet he still finished his career with 548 home runs, which pre-Steroid Era was good for seventh and is still good for 15th today.

But forget Mike Schmidt for a minute. Let me give you a hypothetical:

Say you had a guy who played on the left side of the infield. Say this guy led his league in home runs eight times and won 10 Gold Gloves.

Wouldn't you think you had some combination of Ozzie Smith and Babe Ruth?

Wouldn't you think that player was one of the top ten players of all time?

That's Mike Schmidt.