Being underrated is a tricky business. The more underrated you become, the more people note how underrated you are, and thus the more people try to emphatically make your case for being better than people think and thus the quicker it is that you become overrated. Ask Ben Wallace how this works. Or the city of Portland, Oregon.
Or ask Shin-Soo Choo who, according to a poll of major leaguers conducted by Sports Illustrated, is the most underrated in all of baseball:
Most selected was Shin-Soo Choo (13%), followed by the Atlanta Braves’ Martin Prado (5%), the Texas Rangers’ DH Michael Young (4%), the Boston Red Sox’s 1B Adrian Gonzalez (4%) and the Washington Nationals’ 3B Ryan Zimmerman (3%).
Choo is a Boras client, of course, so expect to see this poll show up in his little prospectus when he hits free agency. I’m not sure how one goes about overselling underratedness, but I’m sure Boras will figure it out.
UPDATE: Well, this is bad timing.