Underrated Eaton has quietly become a superstar

One problem you’ll hear about last year’s underachieving Chicago White Sox roster is that it was too heavy on the “stars-and-scrubs” model. Plenty of production came from guys like Chris Sale, Jose Quintana and Jose Abreu, but very little production came from the rest of the infield, the back end of the rotation and both corner outfield spots. This year’s White Sox tried to fix that issue by adding guys like Todd Frazier, Brett Lawrie and Mat Latos over the offseason, and thanks to them as well as bounceback years from Melky Cabrera and Avisail Garcia, they entered play on Wednesday tied for the best record in the American League. 

Alongside the big guns, they’ve seen an increase in production from a player who was solid enough in his first two years in Chicago, but is now making the case to be tossed into the “star” category. I’m talking about Adam Eaton, who, going back a whole year now, has quietly been one of baseball’s very best players.

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We talk a lot about sample sizes, particularly this early in the season. What can we take away from small samples? When is a sample large enough to draw meaningful conclusions? Certainly we’re not far enough into 2016 to look at this year’s results alone, but there’s a nice little feature on the FanGraphs leaderboards that allows for “Past Calendar Year” split that helps with that. People are comfortable using full-season stats to evaluate players, and the Past Calendar Year split is is a different version of a full season’s stats, where the arbitrary endpoints are less arbitrary. It’s just “What have you done for me lately?” where “lately” is a full year, and everyone is on a similar playing-time scale.

We often use this feature throughout the season to sort of help mentally readjust perceptions of who the best players in baseball are “right now,” for whatever that’s worth. Something at the top of the leaderboard should immediately catch your eye:

Position-player WAR, past calendar year

1. Mike Trout, 9.5 2. Bryce Harper, 8.5 3. Josh Donaldson, 8.2 4. Manny Machado, 8.1 5. Yoenis Cespedes, 7.1 6. Kris Bryant, 6.7 7. Chris Davis, 6.4 8. Eaton, 6.3 9. Paul Goldschmidt, 6.2 10. Joey Votto, 6.2

You’ve got four guys who are viewed nearly unanimously as the four best in the …

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