Kevin Youkilis: Where's the Respect?

Kevin Youkilis is a great player.

But you wouldn't know it listening to the national media or even the Boston media. Sure, the fans all shout "YOUUUK!" whenever he makes a good play, and everyone loves his funky stance and facial hair, but spend a few minutes reading forums, boston.com, or listening to talk radio and you'd hear so much about the Red Sox needing a "big bat" to replace Jason Bay and Manny Ramirez that you'd think...well you'd think the Red Sox DIDN'T have the guy who was third in the majors in wOBA, third in OPS, second in OBP and heck, even first in runs scored and walks, if you want to use traditional counting stats. And this after ranking fifth in wOBA, sixth in OPS, and sixth in OBP last year.

But after a few weeks of all-star voting, Youk is a distant fourth in the first-baseman tally. Not only does he trail Morneau and Cabrera, but he also trails Mark Teixeira, who's turned in a pathetic .326 wOBA so far. Sure, we know the all-star voting is mainly a popularity contest. But there are still rumblings that the Red Sox need a "slugger" in the middle of the lineup to compete with the Yankees' $114 million (the combined salary of their healthy lineup) murderers' row.

Why is Youkilis not a star? I think it's due to three factors: his numbers don't look as impressive as Manny and Ortiz's did, his personality isn't as exciting as other stars, and he's not written about in the media, which may be a byproduct of the first two reasons.

It seems Sox fans are conditioned to expect two monster hitters in the middle of the order as they did from '03-'07 with David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, who consistently topped 1.000 OPSs. But this is incredibly rare and difficult to accomplish. The Red Sox gave a huge contract to Ramirez, but then found Ortiz when he was undervalued by the Twins and signed him to an extension before he became "Big Papi." Short of lucking into guys like that, or ignoring other parts of the team, it's very difficult to get two all-star hitters in their primes together in the same lineup—not to mention there are fewer of those hitters around now that offense has declined (only three players in MLB topped a 1.000 OPS in both 2008 and '09, compared to seven in 2007 and eight in 2006). So while Youkilis's numbers may not look as impressive on the surface, when compared to the league he is a top 5 hitter.

Similarly, his game is such that Youk's production can get ignored. We all know that casual fans dig the long ball—and Youkilis doesn't hit a ton of those. He can certainly hit one out of the park, but has never hit more than 29 in a season and never ranked higher than 12th in the league in that category. Much of his value comes from his incredible batting eye, as he's leading the majors in walks this year and has walked in an incredible 17.6% of his plate appearances so far, and there's no denying that a walk is one of the most uninteresting plays in baseball. Because of his patience, and his usual spot near the top of the order, he doesn't get a ton of RBI either. This doesn't make him any less valuable, but keeps him off the highlight reels.

Lastly, his personality isn't exactly marketable. He's an intense guy, often swearing at himself when he strikes out, and is a far cry from the happy-go-lucky Manny (how many columns have described Manny as happy-go-lucky?), the generally jovial Ortiz, or the clever, quotable Pedroia. (In fact, his and Manny's personalities are so different that it was a shoving match between the two in the dugout that predicated Manny's departure from Boston.) You don't see him on commercials, and though that may be a chicken-egg thing (is he not on commercials because he's not marketable, or is it his own personal choice?) the fact that he is a rather boring-looking pudgy* white guy can't help.

Can he keep up his pace? There's nothing that shows that he can't. In fact, the guys ahead of Youkilis this year in the stats listed above have been getting quite lucky. Justin Morneau, who's leading the league in everything, has a .423 BABIP. Miguel Cabrera's is .354. Robbie Cano (fourth in wOBA) has a BABIP of .374. Once these normalize closer to their career lines of .292, .311, and .325, respectively, their numbers won't look so good. Youk's BABIP this year? .327, right near his career BABIP of .333. There's little reason to think he can't keep this up for the whole season, and it's very possible he could pass Morneau once Morneau cools off a bit and starts hitting balls into gloves instead of into space.

And maybe Youk will put together a season that is undeniably MVP-caliber, and maybe he'll finally get the respect he deserves.

*"I've seen him in the shower. He's not the Greek God of anything." -Terry Francona