Back in 2014, when WAR was still for nerds, the baseball literati made a strong push for Ben Zobrist as one of baseball’s most underrated superstars. In a piece from The Hardball Times, Neil Weinberg argued Zobrist’s case as one of the league’s best in full. Despite his relatively low counting stats for an MVP-caliber player, Zobrist’s sky-high walk-rate and excellent defense all over the diamond made him one of the most valuable baseball players during his peak.
From 2009 to 2014, Zobrist was the fifth-most valuable player according to fWAR, and ranked third in fWAR.