Jayson Stark's Most Over-rated/Under-rated list

That'l be rectified on the second Tuesday of next January.

 

Andruw Jones? What's he like 30? When it's all said and done, this guys will be a first-ballot HOFer.

 

Andruw Jones is an old 30.

 

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Gotta love the line that Boras threw at Stark about “manipulating the numbers” in the name of “profiteering." HA! :

 

Shut up! Those 4,590-page books on all his free agents are full of FACTS!!! INDISPUTABLE FACTS!!!!

 

I know that a lot of the top choices will cause a big ruckus, but he is dead-on with some of the other guys he put on the top five on either side. I'd go into more detail now, but it's 4:30 in the morning here and my ass should be in bed and unconscious.

PS - If I had to choose between the two rosters, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment about taking the Unders. The only guy they can't match is Koufax (yeah, Stark is talking about career numbers, but I'm still stickin' w/ Sandy).

 

If his criteria is "Not as good as people say," then I have no trouble accepting Koufax and Ryan on this list.

I think "as people say" probably includes some things like All-Century voting, All-Star voting, awards voting (where writers = part of the public, in this case), etc., and the perception of a guy like Nolan Ryan as being one of the greatest pitchers of all time is skewed because, on the field, he was never really even the best pitcher in his era (then again, he spanned about 3 different eras .)

And Koufax's "era" spanned 1/4 of Carlton Fisk's career, which is kinda like saying that Shane Spencer should have been an All-Star in 1998 because of those 70 insane at-bats. You gotta at least pay some attention to longetivity if you want to consider Koufax as the greatest lefty of all time, and that's probably where Stark is going to argue that the perception is skewed.

Which I can't entirely disagree with. He can certainly make a case for every one of his picks.

 

I've heard Stark on the radio discussing his book two or three times. Each time, he's had to defending his pick on Nolan Ryan.
What he says makes sense. Ryan was great, but his winning percentage was almost the same as his teams year after year.
He said he spent a lot of time researching that, looking at like 300 of the "great" pitchers, and Ryan's winning percentage was the closest to his teams of any of those guys.
Also, he always says it is about the difference between how good the guys were and people's perceptions. Being overrated doesn't mean someone sucks.

 

take this for what it is, a simple question: if you could choose anyone, how many people here would choose ryan as a game 7 starter? how many wouldn't?

 

If I could choose anyone?

Not a chance.

 

Ryan? No way.

I'm kind of surprised to be Berra on the underrated list. The guy was an integral part of how many World Series winners?

 

i will point out only one thing. Put that overrated team on the field and it wins one hell of a lot of ball games.
Koufax retired at the peak of his career to avoid disabling injury. For that, he's overrated? Come on Jason, you through that in to stir up attention.