Boggs
 

Watching Boggs play in Boston for his entire career I tend to agree with you by the eye test. However, with Boggs he never deviated from his plan regardless of the situation. He would virtually always take the first pitch, he didn't venture out of the strike zone, he hit mostly everything to center and left-center. His career stats indicated he wasn't nearly as good with 2 outs and runners in scoring position (.306 to .335) and late and close situations (.309 to .335). And because he didn't ever deviate he didn't drive in as many runs. The Red Sox were a slow base running team to begin with, but a majority of Boggs two out singles were hit to left field and particularly at Fenway that is not going to score a runner from second. His value is enormous because of his OBP but objectively and subjectively he wasn't nearly as good when it counted.

He truly seemed to care only about his hit totals. He would protest, apparently, when an error was called instead of awarding him a hit. You would think in a key situation you would rejoice to see a .350 hitter (at that time in his career he was) coming up, but quite the opposite.

He wouldn't be the first player to protest an error call on an apparent base hit. Especially considering he was always a candidate to win a batting title.

Boggs scored over 1500 runs in his career, including 7 straight years scoring 100+ runs. I think it's a little tough to downgrade him for also not driving in a bunch of runs. Rod Carew was the same type of player, although he scored fewer runs in his career than Boggs.

Appreciate what he does do - high on-base percentage (keeping rallies alive) and being on the scoring end. It's not all about driving runs in.

I agree Pedro (and probably every pitcher not named Koufax) is probably underrated in the poll. Where does one find the runs saved metric? Is it on baseball reference or fangraphs, or somewhere else?

It’s probably on one of the sites. I calculate it myself. Take Pedro in 2000 - he posted a 1.74 era allowing 42 earned runs. The league average was 5.06 and pitching the same number of innings as Pedro would have allowed 122 runs. Therefore, Pedro saved the Sox 80 earned runs relative to an average pitcher.

Koufax in 1966 posted a 1.73 era and allowed 62 earned runs. The average pitcher in 1966 posted a 3.29 era and allowed 118 earned runs. Koufax saves the Dodgers 56 runs.

If I could only use one star to evaluate pitchers I would choose runs saved. Obviously it’s not the only important stat.

I like the runs saved/avoided metric. Its kind of like ERA+ multiplied by the innings pitched.

In any case, the common conception that no one since has matched Koufax's peak may not necessarily be so.

Pedro, Kershaw, Maddux, Ryu :D. Been some great peak pitchers since.