I was thinking about this today as the Mets were honoring their longtime broadcaster Ralph Kiner, and looking back at the numbers I can't think of a more underrated player there ever was. http://www.baseball-reference.com/k/kinerra01.shtml.279/.398/.548 with 369 Home Runs, 1015 RBI's in 10 Seasons between 1946-1955. Retired at the age of 32 because of an back injury. He had a better Home Run per At Bat ratio, and a better Home Run per Season ratio then Hank Aaron did in the Pre-Steroids era. If he hadn't gotten injured, we just might be talking about him as one of the Greatest Players to ever play the game.
I'm sure everyone, or at least most people have heard of him, but yeah.. he doesn't get enough credit.
Hes in the hall of fame so I don't know if you can call him underrated..though he is never really mentioned. and I wouldn't say he played long enough to be called the GOAT
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (JHair @ Jul 15 2007, 10:00 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Hes in the hall of fame so I don't know if you can call him underrated..though he is never really mentioned. and I wouldn't say he played long enough to be called the GOAT</div>Well, thats the problem. He had to retire cause of a back condition, if he had modern medicine and could have had Surgery on it we could be talking about another Member of the 600 Home Run Club. If not more then that.
