Many players in all sports leagues are sifted into two separate categories: underrated or overrated. There's always a few sleeper players (e.g. Ben Zobrist) who end up in all-star games, and there's always a few players who sign stratospheric contracts then drastically underperform (e.g. Jose Guillen).
In Major League Baseball this year, a great amount of attention is given to St. Louis Cardinals' superstar Albert Pujols, who is neither underrated nor overrated. With everyone focused on him, not many are paying attention to the most underrated player in the MLB: Prince Fielder.
Some casual baseball fans might know Fielder as "that guy who won the Home Run Derby a couple weeks ago." But if you look closely at the Milwaukee first baseman's stats, you realize what an outstanding season he's actually having. Fielder is tied for fifth in the National League in home runs, but that's no surprise to me. What's really surprising is that he has, in one season, gone from a one-tool, power-hitting slugger, to a .300 hitter.
But Fielder hasn't just raised his batting average; he's raised almost every other statistical category from last year. His On-Base Percentage raised from .372 in 2008 to .438 (second in the MLB, behind Pujols), and his Slugging Percentage leaped from .507 to .610 (also second in the bigs). His On-Base plus Slugging Percentage skyrocketed from .879 to 1.048 (second in the MLB). His Value Over Replacement Player (the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances) is 49.4, which is less than only Pujols and Florida Marlin shortstop Hanley Ramirez. Fielder's hitting is the key to the Brewers success, and his hitting has helped everyone else on the team thrive.
But hitting isn't all Fielder can do. Fielder went from one of the worst defensive first basemen in the majors (17 errors in 2008, second worst in the MLB) to a much more sound defender (only 4 errors thus far). Fielder is also the most fleet-of-foot 268-pound players I have ever seen. Fielder isn't going to be a big threat to steal a base, but he is a very smart and good baserunner, and is actually pretty damn fast (Prince holds the distinguished record of heaviest player ever to hit an inside-the-park home run, which he did last year).
At age 25, Fielder has nowhere to go but up. Right now, he will have to settle for second-best behind Pujols. But the Big Broccoli has nowhere to go but up. Watch out.
a couple quick points on prince fielder
ReplyDelete- his recent spike in batting average is aided by a career high in batting average on balls in play which is curently at .344. his career high in BABIP is .305 so most likely that will regress and lead to a drop in batting average.
- That being said batting average is a pretty worthless statistic especially when we have so many more valuble batting statistics like OBP, OPS, and wOBA. Therefore Prince's large increase in OBP makes him a very valuble hitter.
- Now for a little more bad news Prince Fielder is still a shitty fielder. Errors are a terrible representation of a fielders prowess. for a fielder to make an error he has to do atleast one good thing which is get to the ball something prince is doing even less this year than last shown by his range runs going from a -3.1 to a -4.4 according to fangraphs and a -5 run fielder overall.
- Overall Prince Fielder is having a very impressive season as a 39 runs over replacement when you factor in fielding and position good for about 3.9 wins above replacement (10 runs is worth approxiametly 1 win according to Bill James' pythagreon win formula) good for 21st amongst hitters. I highly doubt this makes him the most underrated player in baseball when players like nyjer morgan, marco scutaro, mark reynolds, and matt kemps have all been worth more then him (mostly due to there stellar defense) are more unheralded.