Just for Sport

A few days ago, I posted about overrated football players. Today, we visit the world of baseball. Again, this work was done by a committee of five (and sometimes four). (Note: There will not be posts about basketball or hockey. Only one of our number knows enough about hockey to say anything valuable, and you could fill up four or five rosters of overrated players in the NBA.) We ended up with a five-man rotation, three closers, three catchers, five outfielders, two managers, and two each of the rest of the positions. There was much more contention involved in the creation of this team than in the NFL version. Many lively debates broke out, and several compromises were made. The same basic rules applied here. This time I’m not going to try to explain why we picked every single player, just provide commentary where it is warranted. Watch the comments, I’ll have at least a couple about picks that I disagree with.

SP
John Lackey
Chan Ho Park
Jeff Weaver
David Wells
Jaret Wright

Perhaps as residents of Abilene, Texas, we are biased, but John Lackey is overrated around here. Locals talk about him as if he were the second coming. The man has had one really good start, and it happened to be in Game 7 of the World Series. Otherwise, he’s a thug.

Closers
Francisco Cordero
Jason Isringhausen
Brad Lidge

One of the funniest things about my recent visit to Minute Maid Park was the 12 year old kid behind me yelling for “Lights Out Lidge!” only to see him blow something like his third save in a week - against the Diamondbacks.

C
Mike Piazza
2/3 of the Molina Family

Mike Piazza gets credit for playing the catcher position, but it’s more like he takes up space back there. He’s a one-dimensional player, simple as that. Which 2/3, you ask? That’s up to you to decide.

1B
Jason Giambi
Richie Sexson

The fact that Giambi won an MVP is a joke.

2B
Marcus Giles
Jeff Kent

We’re just not a fan of the ’stache.

3B
Adrian Beltre
Alex Rodriguez

A-Rod is certainly a good player, but not, as some might say, the best active player. Not at all.

SS
Bobby Crosby
Derek Jeter

This was by far the most crowded position. We settled on probably the worst player ever to be listed as a preseason pick for MVP (Crosby) and on Mr. Overrated himself.

OF
Johnny Damon
J.D. Drew
Adam Dunn
Jim Edmonds
Juan Pierre

We wanted six outfielders, but couldn’t get past seven. So, we simply cut the weakest two. What we got is a pretty good list of overrated players, perhaps captained by Jim Edmonds, the biggest flopper in baseball if such a thing can exist.

Manager
Dusty Baker
Lou Piniella

I cringed when I realized that our picks were the last two managers of the Cubs. We couldn’t believe it this offseason when Lou Piniella emerged as the consensus best manager available. Here’s how you tell: My friends made fun of me when they found out the Cubs had hired Piniella.