Sports Q: Who was the better Red Sox player, Dwight Evans or Mookie Betts?
It's a battle of beloved former Red Sox right fielders.
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Who was the better Red Sox player, Dwight Evans or Mookie Betts?
Continuing in our ongoing, organic Who Was Better? series here at the Sports Q, today we’ve got a matchup of two brilliant right fielders, one who got better into his 30s and one who was traded by the Red Sox well before his 20s were up. If you don’t love both of these players – and aren’t annoyed that one spent a final year with the Orioles and the other is now a Dodger – I’m not sure you’re a Red Sox fan at all. The tale of the tape between Dewey and Mookie:
Evans (1972-90): 2,505 games, .272/.369/.473, .842 OPS, 379 homers, 127 adjusted OPS, 66.5 Wins Above Replacement, eight Gold Gloves, three All-Star appearances, two Silver Sluggers, 1981 AL home run leader, led the league in walks three times, two top-five MVP finishes, one rocket-laser arm, one awesome mustache.
Mookie Betts homers during Game 5 of the 2018 World Series at Dodger Stadium.
Betts (2014-19): 794 games, .301/.374/.519, .893 OPS, 139 homers, 134 adjusted OPS, 41.8 WAR, four Gold Gloves, four All-Star appearances, three Silver Sluggers, 2018 AL batting champion, two-time AL runs leader, 2018 AL MVP, 2016 AL MVP runner-up, most complete player developed by Red Sox in the draft era.
I think most people will give this to Evans, one of the most accomplished and popular players in Red Sox history. He has the huge longevity advantage, with more than three times as many games as Betts in a Red Sox uniform, and he should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I get the choice of Evans. I won’t argue it, because Evans deserves all of the admiration he gets.
But I’m going with Betts. The Red Sox have never developed a more complete player in the draft era, if ever. In just 5 ½ seasons with the franchise, he won an MVP award (Evans never did), starred for a World Series winner (Evans never did), made more All-Star games, won more Silver Sluggers, and was worth nearly two-thirds of the WAR in roughly one-third of the games. Evans’s best season, per WAR, was the strike-shortened 1981 (6.7 WAR). His second-best was ’82 (6.4 WAR). Betts had seasons of 10.6, 9.5, and 6.9 WAR with the Sox. Evans is the best defensive right fielder I’ve ever seen, but Betts is close. Very close. Very, very close.
It made me mad that Evans spent the final season of his 20-year career in Orioles orange. (Where, by the way, he had a remarkable .393 on-base percentage at age 39.) It infuriates me that Betts, who should have had a decade or two with the Red Sox, very well may go into the Hall of Fame someday in a Dodgers cap. They were both great Red Sox. Evans did it much longer. Betts did it better.
But what does everyone else think? Who was the better Red Sox player, Dwight Evans or Mookie Betts? I’ll hear you in the poll or comments below.
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