Rich Lederer has an interesting and entertaining article up at The Baseball Analysts regarding overrated ballplayers. Basically, Rich identifies overrated players as ones who:
[x] Have an AVG better than the league
[x] Have an OBP worse than the league
[x] Have a SLG worse than the league
Ostensibly these are players whose offensive value is derived mostly from their high batting average. In other words, guys who hit lots of singles, don't draw walks and don't hit for much power. It doesn't take into account speed-related contributions (e.g. stolen bases). Here is the Top 10:
YEAR AVG OBA SLG
1 Willy Taveras 2005 .291 .325 .341
2 So Taguchi 2005 .288 .322 .412
3 Toby Hall 2005 .287 .315 .368
4 Terrence Long 2005 .279 .321 .378
5 Edgardo Alfonzo 2005 .277 .327 .345
6 Juan Pierre 2005 .276 .326 .354
7 Neifi Perez 2005 .274 .298 .383
8 Shannon Stewart 2005 .274 .323 .388
9 Jose Reyes 2005 .273 .300 .386
10 Darin Erstad 2005 .273 .325 .371
The Mets' very own Jose Reyes clocks in at #9, which shouldn't really come as a big surprise to anyone who has followed the Mets. Reyes draws nary a walk and hits very few homeruns. He did hit 17 triples last year, but he only hit 24 doubles to go along with just seven homeruns. His inability to draw walks hurts him in two ways: first, it makes his on-base percentage heavily-dependent upon his batting average. Second, it makes his 48 extra-base hits much less impressive because he had so many (696) official at-bats.