Skip to main content

Rightfield: Dwight Evans

Hall of Fame standards: 73.3 Career WAR / 42.9 Peak WAR / 58.1 JAWS
Evans: 66.7 Career WAR / 37.0 Peak WAR / 51.8 JAWS

Evans spent 20 years in the majors (1972 to '91), 19 of them with the Red Sox and mostly in the shadow of Hall of Fame teammates Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, not to mention 1975 AL Rookie of the Year and MVP Fred Lynn. Evans was a stud in his own right, however. He had a career .272/.370/.470/127 OPS+ line with 2,446 hits and 385 homers, though he made just three All-Star teams. Because he was an excellent defender (+82 runs, not to mention eight Gold Gloves), he was far more valuable than Rice (47.2/36.1/41.7), though Evans only cracked the AL top 10 in WAR twice, leading it in the strike-shortened 1981 season.

Back when JAWS was based on Baseball Prospectus' version of Wins Above Replacement Player, Evans was above the Hall of Fame bar, but that's no longer the case. Still, it's a shame that he fell off the ballot after just three years with a high of 10.4% of the vote.