Thursday, May 04, 2006

Is Mr. November actually Mr. Overrated?

Newsday is reporting that this week's Sports Illustrated will reveal that Derek Jeter was voted "Most Overrated" in a poll of 470 major leaguers.

That surprised me quite a bit. The list has A-Rod #3, which means that it's not very accurate, and seems to suggest that the guys with the big contracts may have gotten the votes (Beltran is #2). But even so, if that were the case, I'd expect Beltran or A-Rod to be ahead of Jeter. Perhaps one of Jeter's wonderful intangibles is making his opponents let their guard down because he tricks them into believing he's an overrated player. Man, is he dreamy.

4 comments:

Ross said...

I think there are a few factors here. First, you have to be "rated", or in other words, thought about. Jeter surely has the most commercials and endorsements of any player in baseball. However, he's not baseball's best player, that could make other players (9% evidently), call him overrated.

The fact is, you're another player, you're not going to pick Alfonso Soriano, as most of the time you don't see him or hear anything about him (with the exception of this Spring of course). In this respect, it is almost assuredly going to be a big market, and by the results, quite possibly a New York player.

Some people who write on this blog think Andy Pettitte is overrated. How often is a player thinking about Andy Pettitte. How often does Andy Pettitte show up on commercials?

Al Leiter commented on this during last night's Yankee broadcast. He said that when he was sent surveys like this, they give you a list of players, so unless you see the actual survey they sent out, you do need to question the validity. He said when he filled them out, he never put any thought into it, just saw a name and circled it.

Jeter's comment was simply "I guess I don't have to worry as much about performing well now, since I'm overrated anyway."

Greg said...

By your argument, Jeter is overrated, to some extent. People make him out to be a super-duper star like Pujols, but he's just not that good a player. He's a very good player who's very visible, so this gets translated as "one of the best of the best" when that's just not the case.

As for Pettitte, people talk about him all the time (more so when he was playing in New York) as being a "big game pitcher," but he had a very long stretch of mediocrity before he switched to the much weaker-hitting NL.

If I had to chose one pitcher to pitch a Game Seven for me, he'd be pretty far down the list (and so would Clemens, incidentally, but that's another argument altogether..).

Ross said...

I don't think him having more commercials than Pujols means he's overrated. I think it means he's more marketable. I also think it's why the other players voted Jeter though.

If Vijay Singh is doing better than Tiger Woods, he's still not going to have a fraction of the commercials.

Did anybody think Anna Kournakova was a top tennis player? I don't think so. She was just a more marketable one (which in her case is a pretty sad fact).

To who is Jeter really overrated? Quite possibly by people who don't know baseball at all. But other than that, it's not like he's won an MVP award, and I think he should have in 1999.

Greg said...

1999? The same year that everone but George King thought that Pedro should have won??? Come on... now you're just making this too easy.