JABO: The Diamondbacks’ Hidden Star
A few months ago, someone asked me who the most underrated player in baseball was, and after kicking around a few names, I settled on Arizona outfielder A.J. Pollock. Pollock got to the big leagues as a speed-and-defense center fielder who hit well enough to justify a regular gig, and then had his breakout year derailed last season when Johnny Cueto hit him in the hand with a fastball. Since he missed roughly half the season, it was easy to overlook his offensive improvements, but Pollock carried the added power and improved contact rate over to this season, and has developed into one of the very best outfielders in all of baseball.
But Pollock’s 2015 season has been so good that it’s hard to call him the game’s most underrated player anymore. After all, he made the All-Star team this year, and thanks to a .325 average and a decent likelihood of being honored with a Gold Glove at years end, he’s not really flying under the radar anymore. Like Ben Zobrist and Bobby Abreu, Pollock might have been mentioned as the game’s most underrated player so many times that he’s now being properly rated.
But even with Pollock’s graduation to stardom now being pretty widely accepted, I still think the game’s most underrated player might be an outfielder for the Diamondbacks. This time, I’m going with Pollock’s teammate David Peralta.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
And still more underrated might be Ender Inciarte. Which is how you get baseball’s best OF right now, even if the DBacks would be way down the list if you asked the average fan for the best OF of 2015.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have a bone to pick with you. But, point taken.
Yeah, Polanco’s gone nuts in the second half.
Peralta’s a great pick for most underrated.
I thought you were going to go with Welington Castillo though. Thrice traded, 147 wRC+, replacement for the failed Pete O’Brien experiment….
Castillo is definitely underrated… 3.0 and 2.4 fWAR the past two seasons, yet he was thrown to the bench and bounced around three teams this year, despite only being 28.
Terrible framing metrics, though, and a lot of his WAR the past few years has come from defense. If framing is canceling out what he offers as a defender, he’s a career 104 wRC+ hitter without much in the way of baserunning or glovework contributions.
Hey Yasmany, quit dissing your teammate!
i think you mean failed Tuffy’s knee, Pachecos bat, Laird’s everything, Salty’s bat, Hernandez minor league career and then O’Brien As a catcher. This has to have been the most ridiculous path to a strong offensive performance at the catcher position, ever.
Remember in addition that the Dbacks actually traded a catcher to the team that Castillo was playing for this offseason, while Castillo was available for trade.
Stewart and La Russa are not into sabr style management but do seem to use advanced mathematics and even theoretical physics in their super double chaos theory
I was going for concise, but, yeah, this 🙂
I would argue Francisco Cervelli. Cast off by the Yankees, even though all he ever did for them was perform on the rare occasions he got to play (though they did get Justin Wilson in return, a rare solid trade for both teams!).
He plays extremely similar to Posey, but without the name recognition and slightly less power.
Also my favorite stat: he’s also one of the top 10 in MED%, and by far the slowest. I guess he really hits it where they ain’t.
The first name that popped into my mind when I saw the title of this article was Cervelli. At 3.0 fWAR and rated at the very top for catcher pitch-framing, he’s certainly an underappreciated star, and one of the best backstops on the bigs.
Before we call him “one of the best backstops in the bigs,” let’s see him make it through consecutive seasons without a lengthy DL trip.
If he also maintains that .350 BABIP during that time frame, I’ll totally agree,
Career BABIP .342 over 1000+ ABs.
A catcher with a career wRC+ over 109 and in the top 5 in pitch framing is one of the best backstops in the bigs.
Who’s better? Posey, Lucroy, Martin, d’Arnaud (maybe?), Grandal (maybe?), McCann (maybe?). He’s definitely in the top 10, and you would absolutely take him over guys like: Hundley, Norris, Vogt.
Yeah, exactly.
1000 PA.
The other, and more important, problem is that this is his first full, healthy season since 2010 (knock on wood).
A true-talent 95-105 wRC+ guy who misses at least a month every year isn’t a Top 10 catcher, and he hasn’t quite proven himself otherwise, yet.
I’d actually take Jake Lamb as most underrated. His bat could be very special for the D-Backs and he showed a glimpse of it to start off the year but his injury derailed him. Long history in the Minors of +.900 OPS.
In a 5×5 OBP H2H 12 team keeper league. I have to choose two out of Peralta, Yelich, Soler, Eaton, Russell, C Seager, Gallo, and Baez. Only getting “real” current production out of Peralta and Eaton for the most part this year, but Yelich and Soler have been hurt or underperformed, and Seager, Gallo, and Baez seem destined not to give me much of a look at all this year. Also, Russell batting 9th seems to cloud what he might really be. Thoughts are appreciated
That hotel is a dump and your monopoly is pathetic.
In the past every 5 to 5, 12 tour H2H League team. I have to choose two Peralta Ielich, Soler, Eaton, Russell, C. Gallo and Baez. Just what “really” get Peralta, Eaton, in many cases this year, more pain and Soler or unsuccessful Ielich and try Gallo and Baez tried gives me a lot when I see the whole year today. In addition, Figure 9 strokes Russell cloud can. These thoughts are appreciated.
What you just did there was impressively weird. I don’t know what to think, but I am guessing that was the aim.
He translated it into three languages (Serbian, Vietnamese, and French) and then translated it back to English and posted it. A good representation of the fantasy players here.
Fantasy comments are not appreciated
Keeper OBP league? Have to go Yelich + one of Russell / Seager.
Baez, Soler & Gallo are just potential right now.
Russell over Seager if you want proven production + positional flexibility at hard-to-fill MI. Seager if you want to gamble on higher OBP and immediate impact. Seagar not guaranteed a job.
Yelich > (Eaton & Peralta) in virtually all stats, esp considering age-to-league production. Eaton & Peralta definitely not 2 of the top 24 players in that format.
Thank you for your thoughts.
I think Peralta is getting some of Pollock’s reflected glow here, as the 137 wRC+ is attributable in part to an inflated .357 BABIP. Hit Tracker also has only two of his thirteen homers being of the “no doubt” variety, although he does better in overall batted ball distance. The projection systems aren’t terribly optimistic about Peralta going forward and I agree with them. He’s a solid player but hardly one of the most underrated in the major leagues.
Even as a Dbacks fan I have a hard time seeing Pollock or Peralta continuing to play like this going forward.
It’s all about adjustments at this stage. Peralta has been doing a good job adjusting on the fly so far and it doesn’t look like pitchers really have a book on him yet, Pollock has had the benefit of being seen as a speed/contact type so he sees a lot of fastballs.
I think some regression is expected for both as the league pays more attention and Peralta is more consistently tested for weakness, but both really do have solid bats. Hopefully Inciarte will help sheild Peralta.
Is .357 really that inflated of a BABIP? It’s high, but I think the warning territory for BABIP is only really around .370 and higher
Yes. Yes it is.
In the World Series era, only 8 players have produced a .350+ BABIP over 5000 PA.
Only 24 have produced a BABIP over .340 over that sample size.
That’s quite the arbitrary PA cutoff? Nobody’s talking about Peralta doing this for the majority of a long MLB career. Plenty of players since even 2010 have had multiple .350+ BABIP seasons, and the list isn’t exclusive to fast elite hitters.
No, but it is pretty much exclusive to hitters who are very fast or hit a very high percentage of line drives. Peralta doesn’t fall in either group, and he has no history of a BABIP this high.
Would you rather I cut it off at 3000 PA?
That gets the total “all the way up” to 11.
If I use 2000 PA (which I think is a little too low, personally), it’s 15 players in the World Series era.
In the Integration Era, it’s 11 qualified hitters, 8 with at least 2000 PA, and 4 with at least 3000 PA.
The only two players with at least 5000 PA and a .350 BABIP in the Integration Era are Derek Jeter and Rod Carew.
Anything above .340 is suspect until a player has done it several times.
Yeah, a 28 year old with a BABIP driven 4 WAR in 205 games doesn’t quite pass my smell test for most underrated.
I’d probably go with Kole Calhoun or Kevin Kiermaier.
//Like Ben Zobrist and Bobby Abreu, Pollock might have been mentioned as the game’s most underrated player so many times that he’s now being properly rated.//
I used to think this was possible…
I think a good amount of his high BABIP comes from his willingness to slap the ball to left when teams shift on him, and now that they don’t shift anymore he pulls it through the hole a lot in the second half. A-la Moustakas this year
As a DBacks fan it pains me to say it but Peralta is a platoon guy. Admittedly, a LH platoon guy which is 1000x better than a RH platoon guy, but a platoon guy nonetheless. 883 career OPS against righties and 611 vs lefties. He has only been allowed to face lefties 68 times this year which is even less than last year. Now he has hit a little better against lefties this year with a 736 OPS but clearly he is not being allowed to hit against anything except the easiest lefties.