Why is Reds outfielder TJ Friedl so underrated?
Last night MLB Network unveiled their top 10 center fielders in baseball. They’ve been going through the different positions and only Matt McLain had made a top 10 to this point (he was #5 on the list of second basemen), but the Cincinnati Reds finally got another player on a list as TJ Friedl came in at #9 on the center fielder list
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Some players ahead of him make sense. Aaron Judge was the top rated player and Julio Rodriguez was second. Luis Robert was third and Mike Trout was fourth. All of those players ahead of TJ Friedl make sense. But then you get to Michael Harris II, James Outman, Byron Buxton, and Cedric Mullins.
While I will argue with anyone about how accurate WAR is – regardless of which version you are using – Fangraphs version of WAR had all of those guys behind Friedl in 2023. It was close with those guys, but the Reds outfielder was ahead of them. Using the same list of 10 players, but looking at the Baseball Reference version of WAR, Friedl was also ahead of everyone on the list outside of Julio Rodriguez, Luis Robert, and Aaron Judge. Averaging the two versions of WAR puts Friedl at fourth.
Even in the short little recap of Friedl on the show, the numbers they used suggest that he should have been rated higher than they wound up rating him.
Friedl hasn’t exactly been a long-established guy. In August of 2022 he was in Triple-A. Not sure anyone else on the list can have the same thing said about them. But since August 14, 2022 – the day Friedl was called back up – he’s 5th in Fangraphs version of WAR at 5.4.
Is he being underappreciated because of how his 2022 season played out and he had a full-season breakout this past year? Probably. If he’s capable of repeating his 2023 campaign he won’t remain underrated and underappreciated much longer.
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