Boston Red Sox: Most underrated players in franchise history (part 2)
Many excellent Red Sox players are forgotten about or simply underappreciated. Here is part two of a look at the most underrated in team history.
In part one of this series, we took a look at five of the most underrated players in Boston Red Sox history. These were players who Red Sox fans liked (or maybe they didn’t) during their careers who are now overlooked for their contributions to the team. As with anything to do with discussing players who are underrated (or overrated), there is a slight degree of subjectivity involved.
In looking at both who I consider to be underrated and overrated in Red Sox history, I’ve been trying to be as objective as possible by using statistics to bolster my arguments in either case. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, though, so some blend of objectively looking at both their numbers and performance while removing emotion from the equation is the way I’ve tried to approach these lists.
Lastly, I’ve had some interesting discussions on the commonality shared between the terms overrated/underrated and popularity. This is something to keep in mind with these lists and another reason why I’m trying to use statistics to bolster my cases with each player. It’s inevitable that popularity comes into the equation, though, because what is being underrated if not being overlooked and not as popular as others think?
Conversely, overrated would be the state of being more popular than your numbers would indicate you “deserve” (again, some subjectivity seeping into the mix). It’s an imperfect, inexact science and there is no pleasing everybody, but I’m hoping the disagreements can at least be settled civilly without personal attacks and insults (which, judging by the Facebook comments to part one of my overrated players article, seems highly unlikely).
As always, in no particular order, let’s begin.
Reggie Smith
Spending the first eight seasons of his career with the Red Sox between 1966 and 1973, Reggie Smith was a durable rifle-armed outfielder who hit for good average and power. A core member of the Impossible Dream team of 1967, Smith played 140 or more games in every one of his seasons in Boston except for two (in which he still played in 115 and 131 games).
Smith was a reliable power hitter who put up a .267 average to go along with 149 home runs and 536 RBI in 1014 games for Boston. In the famous 1967 season, he batted .246 with 15 home runs and 61 RBI, but he came into his own after that and put up several productive seasons.
His best season in a Red Sox uniform was in 1971 when he hit .283 with 30 home runs and 96 RBI. He was also an All-Star for the Red Sox in 1969 and 1972.
After leaving Boston in 1973, he spent two and a half seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, five and a half with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and a final season with the San Francisco Giants before retiring after the 1982 season. Smith then spent time as a coach and instructor in the Dodgers organization before becoming a hitting coach for the American national baseball team that competed (and won) in the Olympics.
While players like Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Conigliaro, and Jim Lonborg are the first names that come up when discussing the Impossible Dream season, Reggie Smith tends to be overlooked. Unless you were alive at the time or have a deep understanding and appreciation of Red Sox history, he’s been underrated in the annals of Red Sox history; his numbers show that it shouldn’t be the case as he was one of their best players of the late 1960s/early 1970s.
Vern Stephens
Long before Nomar Garciaparra, the Red Sox had another slugging shortstop: Vern Stephens. While he only played five seasons out of his fifteen year career with the Red Sox, they were arguably the best seasons of his career as he helped the team come within a hairs breadth of winning two American League pennants.
After spending seven seasons in St. Louis and helping the Browns win their only AL pennant in 1944, Stephens came over to the Red Sox for the 1948 season and promptly paid dividends by hitting .269 with 29 home runs and 137 RBI as the Red Sox finished tied in the American League with the Cleveland Indians before losing a one-game playoff.
He was even better in 1949, batting .290 with 39 home runs and a league-leading 159 RBI as the Red Sox again came up just short, needing to win only one game in the final series of the season against the Yankees to clinch the pennant (they ended up getting swept).
For the remaining three seasons he spent in Boston, Stephens hit .295 with 30 home runs and 144 RBI (again leading the league) in 1950 before tailing off a bit in 1951 and 1952 when he battled injuries and saw his power numbers decline. He finished his career with a season in Chicago with the White Sox before going back to the Browns for two final seasons (the last one in Baltimore after they moved to become the Orioles).
Ted Williams had called Stephens the best hitter who ever followed him in the order during his career and Stephens’ career totals of a .286 average, 247 home runs, and 1174 RBI are testament to that.
Stephens made eight All-Star teams (including four straight with the Red Sox from 1948 to 1951) and is a member of the Red Sox Hall of Fame. He deserves to be remembered for his excellence in Boston during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Bruce Hurst
You’re probably rolling your eyes at yet another member of the 1986 Red Sox making a list of mine (Marty Barrett made part one of this underrated list), but Bruce Hurst was one of the best left-handed pitchers the Red Sox ever had and not only deserved to be mentioned as one of the top Red Sox players of the 1980s, but should be on this underrated list as well.
Like many players, unless you saw him pitch or have a deep understanding of team history, Hurst gets overlooked when the discussion turns to the best pitchers the Red Sox have had. First coming up to the big leagues in 1980 and spending the first nine seasons of his career in Boston, Hurst was a promising but inconsistent pitcher and who put up a 42-46 W-L mark with a 4.59 ERA from 1980 through 1985.
He put it all together in the magical 1986 season when he went 13-8 with a 2.99 ERA and 167 strikeouts (while missing six weeks during that summer on the disabled list with a groin injury). He was even better in the 1986 postseason where he went 1-0 with a 2.40 ERA in his two ALCS starts. In the ill-fated World Series, he went 2-0 by out-dueling Ron Darling in Game One (a 1-0 Red Sox victory) and then throwing a complete game to win Game Five by a score of 4-2.
By the end of Game Six when the Red Sox were one strike away from winning the World Series, it was down to Hurst or Marty Barrett as to who would be named World Series MVP (most believed it would be Hurst). Instead, the Mets came back to win the game and forced Game Seven. Hurst was pressed into service on short rest when scheduled starter Oil Can Boyd got drunk and was so hungover on the day of the game that he couldn’t pitch.
Hurst pitched admirably and only gave up one hit through the first five innings, but he got tired in the sixth and the Mets got to him, scoring three runs to tie the game. He was pulled and got the no-decision as the Sox went on to lose the game and series. For the rest of his time in Boston he was an excellent pitcher and went 18-6 in his final Red Sox season of 1988.
Overall with the Red Sox, Hurst compiled an 88-73 W-L record, a 4.75 ERA, and 1043 strikeouts. From the mid-1980s onward he was excellent and provided a fantastic one-two punch at the front end of the rotation with Roger Clemens. While forgotten by many Red Sox fans (especially those too young to have seen him pitch), Hurst was one of the finest lefties the team has ever had.
Mel Parnell
Another overlooked left-handed pitcher from the Red Sox past, Mel Parnell was one of the best hurlers in history, right or left handed. He spent his entire career, which went from 1947 to 1956, in Boston and sits at or near the top in several team pitching categories. He also had the distinction of throwing the last no-hitter by a lefty at Fenway Park, a feat he accomplished on July 14, 1956, until Jon Lester matched the feat fifty-two years later in 2008.
Parnell finished his career with a 123-75 win-loss record, a 3.50 ERA, and 732 strikeouts. His best seasons were from 1948 to 1953 when he won 15, 25, 18, 18, 12, and 21 games over that span. His 1949 season was the best of his career when he led the league in wins and ERA. He went 25-7 with 2.77 ERA, 122 strikeouts, a whopping 295.1 innings pitched (including 27 complete games!), and an equally ludicrous 1240 batters faced.
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Parnell made two All-Star teams, in 1949 and 1951, and he was the starting pitcher in the first game of the brutal final series of the 1949 season against the Yankees that cost the Red Sox the pennant. He led 4-0 in that game before the Yankees came back to win 5-4. He was then brought in the next day in relief and unsurprisingly was tired and gave up a home run to the Yankees.
After going 21-8 in 1953, Parnell suffered a series of arm injuries which hampered him for his final three seasons (where he went a combined 12-16) before he retired after 1956. Following his playing career, he spent a few years calling Red Sox games on television and is known for his famous call of the final out of the 1967 season when the Red Sox clinched the pennant.
However, as a pitcher he is severely underrated and should be remembered for being one of the best Red Sox pitchers of his era during a time when the team was, apart from his first three seasons, not competitive at all.
Ellis Kinder
We finish this list with a third straight pitcher and another who was a contemporary of Mel Parnell and Vern Stephens. Ellis Kinder spent the majority of his career, eight of his twelve seasons, with the Red Sox from 1948 to 1955, and was a successful starter and reliever in the mold of Dennis Eckersley, Derek Lowe, and John Smoltz before any of those men were even born.
Kinder’s best season as a starter was in 1949 when he went 23-6 with a 3.36 ERA and 138 strikeouts in 252 innings pitched. After Mel Parnell lost the first game against the Yankees in the final series of the season, Kinder got the start in the second. He had pitched great through the first seven innings and the Yankess only led 1-0, but Kinder was pinch-hit for and the Red Sox went on to lose the game and the pennant.
In 1951, Kinder was moved into the bullpen when the Red Sox were desperate for a closer and he shone there, becoming one of the best relievers in the American League through 1955. He saved 80 games for Boston over those five seasons, including a league-leading 16 in 1951 and 27 in 1953. For his Red Sox career, Kinder was 86-52 with a 3.10 ERA, 557 strikeouts, and 93 saves.
Related Story. Red Sox: Most underrated players in team history (part one). light
Kinder is a member of the Red Sox Hall of Fame, but like his rotation-mate Mel Parnell, has largely been underrated and unappreciated, his greatness lost to the mists of time. In an era when the Red Sox were mostly terrible, Ellis Kinder was the prototype for the starter/reliever pitcher we’ve seen so much of over the last 30-40 years and a very good one at that.