[Cactusguy21]

So in the 2023-2024 offseason of my Orioles save, a strange thing happened. Yankees star left fielder Adam Haseley was not offered arbitration, in his first arb-eligible year.

A little background on Haseley: He was drafted by the Phillies and performed well in the minors. In the 2020-2021 offseason, after an impressive September debut, he was flipped to the Tigers for two jabroni infielders, in a surprising move. In Detroit, Haseley continued to be a solid player, posting 2.2 WAR over 128 games. Then, on Opening Day 2022, the Tigers traded him and a decent SS prospect to the Yankees for Marcus Stroman. Finally, someone was valuing Haseley as he deserved. Stroman went on to have two great seasons for Detroit.

In New York, Haseley's career took off. He posted 4.6 and 4.8 WAR in his two seasons there, leading the majors in OBP in 2023. Then, suddenly, the Yankees decided to let him go and not offer arbitration.

Enter my Orioles. I needed a new LF to replace the struggling Cedric Mullins and DJ Stewart. Haseley was rated by both my scout and by OSA as a very average, 3-star player. Because I still owed the recently cut Manny Machado over 100 million dollars, I had a tight budget, and Haseley only wanted 1.1 million. It wasn't until after I signed him to a minor league deal (that became a 1.1 million ML deal upon promotion) that I bothered to look at his stats. I realized I had just inadvertently signed the OBP king.

In Baltimore, he's never quite lived up to his gaudy New York stats, but is still a really, really good ballplayer. But he still is considered 3 stars for no reason, and other teams still refuse to value him highly at all (i've looked at trading him once or twice). None of his ratings are above 60 according to my scout. And yet he still regularly posts 4 WAR per season, despite being a very average defender at an easy position.

So, have any of you had a case like this, where scouts and teams totally underrate a player, no matter what he does? It's really, really weird.