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Hi there, it’s Friday, and you know what that means! It’s FanPost Friday again! Last time, we had a fairly successful outing, with three very good stories and a few blurbs left on our Monday Flyby thread. Now that you all get the format, we figure it’s time to amp it up a notch, and perhaps get us thinking a bit more.
This week’s prompt is:
Who is the most underrated player in Red Sox history? Why are they underrated?
This may seem like an intimidating question. After all, I’m asking you to explain why you believe someone is underrated, and that opens things up to argument, which is scary. However, with this question, you don’t need to have a particularly strong case, if you don’t feel like diving into research (I imagine more than a few will do this). If you feel like saying, “Sandy Leon is underrated because he hit hard despite coming to us for basically nothing”, and explaining how Sandy Leon got to us, then that’s fine. I have no qualms with this! If you, on the other hand, have a 7 page essay on why Jim Rice is the most underrated Red Sox player in history though, that too, will be welcomed. It can be a weak argument, a mere opinion, or an airtight case backed by stats. What matters is that you share with us what you feel in a FanPost.
You might be thinking at this point, “Any player in history? What if I’ve only been watching for five years?”
My response to this unasked question (that I just asked for nobody in particular) is, “That’s fine, who is the most underrated player on any Red Sox team that you have watched?”
It can be a player who played one minute with us, one year with us, or one career with us. It can be a player that retired recently, or is still with us today. The only rule is that it has to be a player who played on the major league Red Sox at some point in time, and the period for which they are underrated coincided with their time on the Red Sox. There are a lot of players to choose from, as we have 1417 players who have logged at least one plate appearance, and 828 players who have recorded at least one out in a Red Sox uniform (though some of the 1417 cross over into the 828)
Happy FanPosting! I’ll see you all at the Monday Flyby!
As for why Varitek was chosen for the image: he’s my pick for the most underrated player in the history of the Red Sox. And I’ll explain my own case on Monday.