Kevin McGonigle: Baseball's Most Underrated Player by WAR
Detroit's rookie shortstop ranks third in MLB WAR yet sits outside the top 25 in home runs, OPS, and runs created — a gap driven by elite defense and plate discipline on a team nobody's watching.
Published: · Figures as of September 2, 2026
Asked: Who’s the most underrated player in baseball?
Kevin McGonigle's value isn't showing up where fans look
Screening this season's full leaderboards for players whose overall value outstrips their visibility, one name stands out: Kevin McGonigle, the Detroit shortstop. He ranks 3rd in the majors in Wins Above Replacement (6.11) among 326 qualified position players — behind only Pete Crow-Armstrong and Bobby Witt Jr. — yet he doesn't appear anywhere in the top 25 for home runs, runs created, or OPS, the stats that actually drive attention.
"Underrated" isn't something we track as a single number, so this is an inference built from a real pattern rather than a stored metric: a player whose top-tier value comes from things a box-score skim misses, on a team nobody is watching in September.
What the gap looks like
| Player | WAR rank (of 326) | Runs Created rank | OPS rank | Team context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pete Crow-Armstrong | 1st (8.4) | 2nd | 2nd | Cubs — 78-60, wild-card race |
| Bobby Witt Jr. | 2nd (6.31) | outside top 25 | outside top 25 | Already a recognized star |
| Kevin McGonigle | 3rd (6.11) | outside top 25 | outside top 25 | Tigers — 63-74, 21.5 GB, no playoff stakes |
| Brice Turang | t-7th (5.52) | outside top 25 | outside top 25 | Brewers — best record in baseball |
McGonigle is the only player near the top of the WAR board who combines (1) a genuinely elite overall number, (2) total absence from the offensive leaderboards fans actually scroll, and (3) a team with nothing left to play for — Detroit sits 24th of 30 in the league standings and is riding a three-game losing streak, having been outscored 26-3 in his last two games.
Where the value actually comes from
His .274 average and 14 home runs are ordinary by themselves, but the shape of his season is unusual: 81 walks against just 82 strikeouts (a near-even walk-to-strikeout ratio, rare for a 21-year-old), 24 doubles, and above-average defense at shortstop — his 1.84 defensive WAR ties for 8th in the majors. None of that shows up in a home-run total or an OPS ranking, which is exactly why a player producing at a top-three level leaguewide can go unmentioned.
Confidence: Medium. The WAR ranking and the absence from the flashy boards are both measured facts. What I can't measure directly is public attention or media coverage, so "underrated" here means "high value, low visibility by the proxies the data supports" rather than a verified claim about what fans or evaluators actually think of him.
Runner-up worth naming for the same reason: Brice Turang (Milwaukee) ties for 7th in WAR and actually leads all of baseball in defensive WAR, but he plays for the sport's best record, which tends to bring attention his profile would otherwise lack elsewhere.