Overrated and underrated. Taken together, they might be the most abused words in the English language. That's especially true when it comes to sports.
The terms are used every day, by the media and fans alike. Rarely, if ever, do we pause to consider what they actually mean.
Who is doing the rating? What is the basis for those ratings?
This problem came to mind recently when a colleague texted me about another sparkling performance from Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte. This person declared Marte "the most underrated star in baseball right now."
Really? Again: Who is doing the rating? What is the basis for those ratings?
So, here we are.
We can rate the players on performance, no problem. But what is the perception of those performances? How do we measure that? If we performed scientific polls of, say, media, players, scouts, executives and fans, maybe we'd be getting somewhere. To my knowledge, this polling data doesn't exist. Likewise, maybe you could look at things such as merchandise sales or web searches, but even if you could find that information in a comprehensive form, you'd run into the muddy problem of sorting popularity and/or market exposure away from performance evaluation.
What we're left with are two forms of voting that are more or less designed to be evaluative: All-Star balloting and postseason awards balloting. These aren't perfect, either, but it's what we have.
As it turns out, Marte isn't the most underrated star in baseball. He is underrated; it's just that other players are underrated more.
Using a brand-new method explained below, here are MLB's 10 most underrated players (and how Marte stacks up against them) and its five most overrated players.