52 Weeks, 52 Books

(Note: I’m not entirely sure if the following reviews are in exact order because I moved a few months ago and can’t find the handwritten list I made of books and the date I read them. At the end of the day, the exact date I read each book probably isn’t the most important part of the journey to 52.)

Anyone who knows me even slightly knows full well that I have high disdain for pretty much all things ESPN. Amongst the handful of things on the positive side is writer Jayson Stark, who authored The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated & Underrated Players in Baseball History. I’ve been a fan of his work at ESPN.com for several years and as such, I looked forward to his book on overrated and underrated players. His mentions of current players made stirred up plenty of debate in the sports talk radio circles several weeks before the book’s release.

I knew full well going into the reading of this book that my enjoyment of it wouldn’t hinge on whether or not I agreed with every single ranking done by Stark, rather whether or not the ratings were given with well-reasoned, sound arguments either for or against. As expected, Stark delivered the goods with a remarkably high success rate. At the outset, he details ways by which players become overrated & underrated including 10 maxims for becoming the latter. Very rarely was I left shaking my head because of an inclusion on one side of the list. That could be because he started off so well with the very first player profiled in the game was Nolan Ryan as the game’s most overrated Right-Handed Starting Pitcher. I’ll never deny Ryan’s excellence, but he is so thoroughly overrated by his fans that it can be downright disgusting at times. The no-hitters are a thing of brilliance, but the body of work put together by Ryan is outclassed by legions of his colleagues. Stark does a comprehensive breakdown of Ryan’s overratedness that covers the book’s first four and a half pages.

There were, however, times that Stark had me scratching my head. None more than when he inexplicably included Derek Jeter on the list of underrated shortstops. Not only is Jeter the most overrated defender in the game today (and maybe ever), but he is not even the best shortstop on his own team. That honor goes to the guy immediately to Jeter’s right on the infield. Look, Jeter’s a great player. He’s a pretty solid hitter and an average defender, who has made a good number of plays when it has mattered most, but there is absolutely no way he is underrated, except maybe by Red Sox fans, but they have morphed into a collection of intolerable buffoons since the 2004 World Series so they don’t count anyway.

One name included on the overrated list showed Stark to be something of a prophet. Though the book was released on May 30th, almost two months into the season, it was no doubt completed well before the 2007 season began meaning he was well ahead of the curve when he made Andruw Jones the Most Overrated Centerfielder of All-Time. Jones had an abysmal (by his standards) 2007 at the dish with just 26 home runs (after posting 51 and 41 in 2005 and 2006, respectively). He hit a meager .222 and posted a disgusting .724 OPS, both easily his career worsts. I am not here to suggest that Jones let his ranking in the book factor into his approach for 2007 in any way shape or form, rather I am merely pointing out the coincidental occurrence between his inclusion and his poor season.

Not surprisingly, this particular part of the book drew the lion’s share of attention from the media and became the centerpiece for plenty of analysis. The criticism regarding the selection was due in large part to the fact that much of the section on Jones was based off the observations of some unnamed scouts and an anonymous quote from a player. JC Bradbury, author of the Week 10 selection: The Baseball Economist, took particular exception to the idea that Jones has been living off of reputation on defense. He goes into great detail about how Zone Rating, used by Stark to illustrate Jones’ decline in defense, is a poor measure for judging defense. Instead he suggests looking at revised Zone Rating and Fielder +/- to judge a player’s worth, both of which see Jones is a much more favorable light and make him worthy of the nine straight Gold Gloves he had won. Since the book and Bradbury’s article were published, Jones has gone on to win his 10th straight Gold Glove. Looking at creator John Dewan’s +/- statistic shows that Jones was 2nd to only Carlos Beltran in 2007 (+25 to +24), but he has a commanding lead when you look at the 2005-2007 block. His +63 outclasses the centerfield bunch by nearly 20 points with Nook Logan in 2nd place with a +46 measure.

Both when I read the book in the summer and when the season was completed in October, I was not necessarily against ranking Jones as a highly overrated centerfielder, but not for his work in the outfield. I think he takes more than his share of criticism because the attitude he projects outwardly to the public is nonchalant, uncaring and aloof. Fans, as a whole, really seem to hate that from a player, which is why Barry Bonds is so hated amongst the fans and takes far more heat for the performance-enhancing problem than any one player deserves. Jones recently signed a two-year deal worth just over $36 million dollars with the Los Angeles Dodgers, a much smaller (at least in terms of length) deal than many expected him to receive at the dawn of the 2007 season, but at age 30 he likely has a ton of gas left in the tank and this deal could turn out to be a bargain for the Dodgers. Or he might in fact be the most overrated centerfielder the game has seen and cost the team millions of dollars in wasted at-bats. I don’t think, as some talking heads in Austin-area sport radio (which has to be one of the worst local markets in the country in terms of talent) implied, that Stark made Jones the signature inclusion of overratedness simply to move units. Agree or disagree, the selection was evidentially backed up and then, at least to some degree, justified by his poor 2007 season.

My biggest problem with the book outside of any individual selections was Stark’s continued use of the disclaimer that just because a guy was included on the overrated list doesn’t mean that Stark thinks he’s a pile of garbage. Once that disclaimer is cleared up in the beginning of the book, I did not find it necessary to continually bring it up. I understand I am nitpicking, it just got tiresome to read each time he was worried that some idiot might perceive an inclusion on the overrated list to mean that Stark does not recognize the player’s value, and yes, most everyone on the overrated lists had at least a modicum of value because at the end of the day, you don’t really get overrated without having some type of value somewhere throughout a career.