I applaud our baseball blog, Beyond The Box Score, for attempting to determine the most under-appreciated player in baseball. The writers polled ultimately settled on Shin-Soo Choo, a solid choice that is explained further in the post.
Jim Thome, The Most Under-Appreciated Player In Baseball
↵They seem to have focused more on the 2010 season, so I’ll look at it from a career perspective: it’s Jim Thome. If you’re familiar with me, you could have guessed I would say this, but I think it’s a pretty justifiable answer.
↵Here we have a guy who, by season’s end, could very well be 7th on the all-time career home run list. His career OPS+ of 146 trumps Ken Griffey, Jr.‘s 136 (albeit in about 1,700 fewer plate appearances). He’s a notably huge, friendly guy who has played in multiple large markets, and he’s never been suspected of PED use -- most of us work under the assumption that he sustains himself by taking fistfuls of grain out of a wheat thresher and chomping them down. He’s a Hall of Fame lock.
↵And yet, he’s certainly not a household name. The MVP voting process has produced many an injustice, and one of the most glaring is Thome’s 7th-place finish in 2002. He enjoys a significant amount of respect from fans; my argument is that he should command five times the respect that he does.
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