Mr. Underrated

If you were going to craft an underrated position player in baseball you'd put him on a bad team in a small market and subject him to a home stadium that's antagonistic towards offense. 

The player wouldn't hit .300 and he wouldn't pound a lot of homers. But he'd get on base at a nice clip and accumulate a lot of doubles and triples. He wouldn't stock up on RBIs, in part because his teammates don't get on base ahead of him.

Mr. Underrated would be a good defensive player, but not the flashy type who makes regular Web Gem appearances. He wouldn't tweet, or if he did, he wouldn't say anything notably stupid.

The same speed, good instincts and game knowledge responsible for his good defense would also inform his baserunning. He wouldn't hang gaudy steal numbers, but his SB percentage would be excellent and he would run the bases well and rarely make a mistake on the basepaths.

It wouldn't hurt his underrated status if he was highly touted but hadn't quite lived up to his billing. If a teammate has eclipsed him, so much the better.

That's the profile of Alex Gordon, the Royals' seventh-year pro. Now staffing left field, Gordon has hit .301/.372/.481 in tough Kaufman Stadium since 2011. He's gone yard just 39 times in that period but supplemented that with 102 doubles and 11 triples. A former third baseman, Gordon grades well above average with the glove and on the basepaths despite very modest stolen base numbers.

By wins above replacement, Gordon has been the eighth most valuable position player in the majors over the last 162 games, keeping company with Robinson Cano, Buster Posey, Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun. You likely hadn't placed Gordon in that rarefied air. And that's just the point.

Gordon will have to clear the fences twice as often or win a couple of batting titles to raise his profile, and to that end he's hitting .345 so far this year. But even if he doesn't achieve either, staying healthy and continuing his broad-based excellence will keep him among the game's elite and help Kansas City make a run or two at the playoffs over the next few seasons.