Is Whit Merrifield underrated?

Despite only playing in Kansas City for a little over three months, Ben Zobrist will go down as one of my all-time favorite Royals. Zobrist is one of the coolest guys in baseball, had some huge hits during the 2015 postseason, and named his daughter Blaise Royal. His time in Kansas City was short, but it was special.

Before he came to Kansas City, however, I knew him as the first player to ever be so uniformly recognized as underrated that the very term lost all meaning. From 2009-2016, Zobrist had at least a 4.0 fWAR in six of those eight seasons and he had a wRC+ of 126. Of batters with at least 4,000 plate appearances during that span, only two primary middle infielders had a better wRC+.…