The 20 Worst Of The Best

There are busier times on the sporting calender than the second week of June. Yes, it's draft day in the world's first video gaming league and, sure, you have the shock retirement of a WNBA player but, still, there's not so much going on other than baseball. Oh, right, and the NBA Finals, they're still playing the rest of that, right? Anyway, there was also the end of the Sopranos to keep us busy. People have been pretty riled up about that, although the reasons why people are so focused on the last five minutes of a show that provided more than 86 hours of entertainment don't really make sense in these parts. We thought it was an ending that kept right in line with the rest of the series. Beautifully written, aggravating because of the way it defied expectations and, ultimately, better than just about anything else we've ever seen on the tube. So maybe it was all the talk about disappointing endings and the primacy of baseball that got us thinking about the worst players to ever win the year-end awards in the national pastime.

A few notes about the methodology we're using. We've done our best not to penalize players for injuries so you won't see Joe Charbonneau, Pete Vukovich or other guys who saw their careers end in training rooms on this list nor will you see guys who won the Rookie of the Year before going on to fair careers. Only the guys who posted career years right off the bat or damn close to it make this list. There's also been some leeway given to those players who won awards but got late starts in their careers like Elston Howard and Sam Jethroe. We're also not considering any MVPs before 1941 because that's when the writers started voting for the award and it gives some symmetry with the other two baubles in our survey. As always we welcome your feedback about what we got right and what we got wrong.

(Dis)Honorable Mentions: Hank Sauer, Mort Cooper, Phil Cavaretta, John Castino, Curt Blefary, Pat Hentgen, Randy Jones, Vern Law, Bob Turley, Jeff Burroughs, Eric Hinske

Spud Chandler, 1943 American League MVP

Chandler was a 29-year old rookie with the Yankees in 1937, didn’t make a World Series appearance with the Bomber champions of ’37, ’38 or ’39 and finished his career with 109 victories. 20 of them came in his MVP campaign when many able-bodied Americans were struggling for victories on fields with names like Guadalcanal rather than Fenway Park. His age kept him out of the war and, ironically, in the majors although he only managed to appear in five games the next two seasons. He did win 20 again in ’46 and made 17 appearances for the ’47 Yanks before retiring. A look at his competitors for the ’43 award lists unknown names like Billy Johnson, Dick Wakefield and Nick Etten and stars too old for military service like Luke Appling and Bill Dickey, explaining just how watered down Chandler’s competition was that year. Mort Cooper, Phil Cavaretta and Marty Marion join Chandler as fair players who rose to award-winning status thanks to the war.

Jim Konstanty, 1950 National League MVP

It’s probably fitting that one of the worst award winners of all time played for the Phillies. Konstanty was a relief ace for the Whiz Kids who made it all the way to the World Series and won 16 games out of the bullpen that season. Those are good numbers but it’s hard to argue that he was more valuable than teammates Robin Roberts or Del Ennis let alone Stan Musial who posted a 1.033 OPS that season. 1950 was the second of three straight second place finishes for Stan The Man and it’s easy to argue that it was merely a desire to spread the wealth that kept him from winning the honors each and every time. Konstanty never earned another vote for MVP in his career, never made another All-Star team and settled into mediocrity.

Bobby Shantz, 1952 American League MVP

The 1952 Philadelphia A’s weren’t a very good team, finishing 79-75 which was good for fourth in the American League. Shantz, however, was excellent. He went 24-7, accounting for more than 30% of his team’s victories and pushed them above the .500 mark they struggled to reach once the early 30’s were over. He’d won 18 games the previous season but only reached double digits one more time in a career that stretched until 1964. He did have several fine seasons as a reliever for the Yankees in the late 50’s but 1952 remained an outlier in an career that could otherwise be called serviceable.

Harry Byrd, 1952 American League Rookie of the Year

See Shantz’s 1952 season and how his 24 wins helped push the A’s above .500? Byrd went 15-15 and between them the two pitchers accounted for half the teams wins. Never has a fourth place team been lavished with so many accolades. Unlike Shantz, though, Byrd wasn’t even average for the rest of his big league tenure. That’s not quite true, he had a decent 1954 for the Yankees who then traded him to Baltimore for Bob Turley, who just making this list. But Byrd only won 31 games after his rookie year and finished with a 4.35 career ERA which means his connections to other people on this list is the most interesting thing about his time in the major leagues.

Don Schwall, 1961 American League Rookie of the Year

Our criteria for Rookie of the Year winners making this list is that their first season was much better than their career totals. Schwall certainly fits under those auspices and even goes one further because he wasn’t even that good in his rookie campaign. He went 15-10 with a 3.22 ERA, sure, but he also walked 110 hitters, 20 more than he struck out. Not a good habit to get into and probably part of the reason he was shifted to reliever just a few years later.

Zoilo Versailles, 1965 American League MVP

Versailles is probably the worst overall player to ever win a MVP award. Even his 1965 season was a mixed bag. He batted .273 with 19 homers, 77 RBI, 45 doubles and 19 triples but his on-base percentage was a miniscule .319 and he struck out 122 times. He won the Gold Glove but made 39 errors at shortstop. Still, those numbers are far better than anything else the career .242 hitter accomplished. His career OBP was just .290, he was caught stealing half as often as he was successful and his career OPS was 50 points worse than the league average of his career.

Mike McCormick, 1967 National League Cy Young

McCormick had some good years as a youngster with the Giants in the late 50’s and early 60’s. He made two All-Star teams before his 23rd birthday but had a terrible 1962 season and was traded to Baltimore before the 1963 campaign. His struggles continued there and he bounced to the woeful Senators for a couple of years before returning to Candlestick for 1967. He went 22-10 with a 2.85 ERA that year, won the Comeback Player of the Year award in addition to the Cy Young and then drifted back into obscurity and out of baseball in 1971. His career ERA was higher than the league average for his career and only in those two All-Star years and the Cy Young ’67 did he significantly better the rest of the league in that metric.

Jim Lonborg, 1967 American League Cy Young

1967 wasn’t a great year for pitchers, was it? Lonborg is the opposite of McCormick in that his Cy Young season came at the start of his career and preceded his journeyman days. He went 22-9, struck out 246 hitters and led the Red Sox to the World Series but had terrible years in ’68 and ’69 before leaving Boston for Milwaukee and Philadelphia. He had a few good years for bad teams but never made an All-Star team nor earned a Cy Young vote after 1967.

Butch Metzger, 1976 National League Rookie of the Year

Metzger shared his award with Pat Zachry of the Reds and neither one set the world on fire after standout first seasons. Zachry is best known (and reviled in Queens) for being traded for Tom Seaver and actually turned in some good seasons for dreadful Met teams even if his win totals don’t back that up. Metzger, on the other hand, couldn’t stop walking people long enough to stay in baseball after the 1978 season, when he and Zachry were actually teammates on a team that lost 96 games.

Steve Stone, 1980 American League Cy Young

Steve Stone in 1980 - 25-7, 3.23 ERA, 9 complete games and 250 innings pitched.
The 10 other seasons of Steve Stone’s career – 82-86, 4.08 ERA, 34 complete games, 1538 innings pitched.
Stone only pitched one season after he won the 1980 Cy Young and is arguably more famous for his WGN work with the Cubs than anything he ever did on the diamond.

John Denny, 1983 National League Cy Young

A running theme of the Cy Young winners on this list is average pitcher having a good year that coincides with a better year by their team. Denny’s no exception. The ’83 Phillies made a run to the World Series where they lost to the Orioles and Denny benefited by having a lower ERA and better run support than the more heralded Steve Carlton. He had 19 of his 123 career wins and an ERA that was more than a full run better than his career mark. He didn’t even make the All-Star team in 1983 which made it exactly like every other season of his career.

LaMarr Hoyt, 1983 American League Cy Young

Should Hoyt be on this list? After all we’ve given a break to guys like Pete Vukovich who got hurt and guys like Jackie Jensen who had a short but productive time in the Show. If addiction is indeed a disease shouldn’t we give the same break to Hoyt? Nah. If only because Dwight Gooden broke out of a cocaine stupor often enough to avoid the list we can’t give Hoyt the benefit of the doubt. Plus he really wasn’t even that great outside of his 24 wins the year he won the award. He didn’t finish in the Top 10 of ERA in a year with a 4.20 league ERA. That’s not hot.

Ron Kittle, 1983 American League Rookie of the Year

Kittle had spinal fusion surgery before he ever made it to the major leagues which led to his release from the Dodgers and may have contributed to his rapid decline after slugging 35 homers and driving in 100 runs for the White Sox in 1983. There’s just as much chance that his hole-filled swing, lack of defensive ability and barely-Mendoza line batting averages were the reason why he never got 500 at-bats after his rookie year.

Willie Hernandez, 1984 American League MVP and Cy Young Award

Hernandez was a middle reliever for seven seasons with the Chicago Cubs before moving to the Tigers before the 1984 season in a trade for John Wockenfuss. Sparky Anderson installed him as closer and he did a great job for a great team to win the award but it was really a question of a guy being in the right place at the right time. He had a couple more decent years finishing games then settled back into a lower leverage role as the 80’s and his career ran out. Other than his dual awards in ’84 there’s nothing to his career record that would make him stand out in a crowd any more than Roger McDowell.

George Bell, 1987 American League MVP

George Bell led the league in RBI once and finished in the top 10 four other times but otherwise he didn’t do anything much to distinguish himself in the annals of baseball history. He was a bad fielder, never took a walk and his career went rapidly downhill after 1987. His strong showings in the MVP voting tell you little more than the obsession baseball writers have with a statistic that has as much to do with opportunity as it does with ability.

Mark Davis, 1989 National League Cy Young

The Zoilo Versailles of the Cy Young Award. Davis was a mediocre starter who was converted to relief work before saving 44 games for San Diego in 1989. He parleyed it into a megabucks deal with the Kansas City Royals and immediately ceased to be a competent major league pitcher. He saved seven games in his two-plus seasons with the Royals and serves as a cautionary tale for any team that’s looking to spend big money on a free-agent reliever. Not that teams have learned the lesson.

Jerome Walton, 1989 National League Rookie of the Year

Walton batted .295 with five homers and 46 RBI to take the award in a rare season that ended with postseason play for the Cubs. That playoff berth and the lack of any other worthy candidates likely contributed to his award. They don’t tell us why the rest of his career was spent falling short of such meager totals, however.

Pat Listach, 1992 American League Rookie of the Year

Two rookies swiped 50 or more bases in 1992. One of them, Kenny Lofton, is still playing in the major leagues. Listach was the other and his career spanned just 353 more games and ended up with a 625 OPS. Right idea, baseball writers, but you picked the wrong guy.

Bob Hamelin, 1994 American League Rookie of the Year

Ah, the Hammer. A massive first baseman/designated hitter, Hamelin slugged his way into our hearts with 24 homers in just 312 at-bats in his rookie year. He followed that up with a .168 batting average in 1995, though, and hit just 41 more homers in a career that took him to Detroit, Milwaukee and retirement after the ’98 season.

Angel Berroa, 2003 American League Rookie of the Year

Is it too soon for Berroa to make this list? After all, there’s been just three full seasons since he took the honor. Those three seasons have been so epically bad, however, that his exclusion would be indefensible. He’s walked just 94 times in his career while striking out on 408 occasions and reached a career nadir last week when he was sent to the minors.

Comments

[Mark]

So what more do you want of a player than to average 27hrs and over 100 RBI's for his career? A hall of famer? No, but George Bell is not even close to one of the worst MVP's of all time.

[mike]

Lonborg had a skiing accident after the '67 season and tore up his knee.....
nice research guys !!!

[mike]

Lonborg had a skiing accident after the '67 season and tore up his knee.....
nice research guys !!!

[Jordi Scrubbings]

Shouldn't Walt Weiss and Chris Sabo be on this list too?

[derek]

this is one of the worst articles i have ever read you information is terrible and really george bell, come on, no offense but this is one of the worst articles ever writeen... someone should give you an award for it!!

p.s. google called they said your info sucks!

[Derek]

I'm dead serious, who wrote this article? The information is so bad this person should not have a job in the sports writers industry. This person who wrote this article is making espn look like chumps that don't have the internet at there disposal for proper information, plus whoever's opinion is in this article you really need to consider this person writting anything else for espn ever again, im going back to sp[orts illustrated much better info!!

[Chris]

I agree - this is really a bad article. Who cares what they did the rest of their career - the award is given for a specific year and not for their career - that is what being elected (or not elected) to the Hall of Fame is for.

[Jason]

How about Scott Brosious winning the WS MVP in 1998? that guy was awful.

[Cathy]

this article was poorly written, poorly executed and mean spirited. Bar arguments are more thought out and articulate

[Thurs]

Nice article.

It's definitely interesting fodder for discussion and I appreciated Mark Davis.

I agree with the Bell pick too, although Lonborg probably should get a mulligan.

[Chad P.]

What about Reggie Sanders, NL ROY in 1995? Still playing, yes, but what has he done? Not a thing.

I also agree that Sabo HAS to be up there.

[The Feed]

Mike and Thurs - All things considered, Lonborg should probably get a mulligan. Got a little caught up with the dual 1967 winners.

Jordi - Weiss was never a great hitter but was always pretty good with the glove, both in the mind's eye and statistically. Bad postseason player though.

Jordi and Chad - Sabo had great years in 90 and 91 but you're right he could've merited a mention.

Chad - Sanders has been slightly above average for most of his career, don't think he was worthy of inclusion. Thanks for pointing him out though.

Jason - Postseason MVP's weren't in the group, just regular season awards. The line for those guys starts at Eddie Perez anyway.

Mark - Bell isn't an awful player by any means but I'd counter those power numbers with his low OBP and poor glove and say he's a one-dimensional player.

[Ron]

I don't think he won an award in 1990, but how about Bobby Thigpen going from glory to bum overnight? Man had 57 saves one year, after back-to-back 34-save seasons, then had 53 saves the rest of his career, which lasted only 3 more meaningful years.

[Ron]

I agree, George Bell was a stretch. I'd rather see Walt Weiss on this list than Bell.

[Redleg]

Where are you people from? Reggie Sanders started in 91, qualified as a rookie in 92. He got a few votes for ROY but did not win, and certainly didn't 3 years after his eligibility was up. Hideo Nomo won the award in 95. Marty Cordova won in the American league, he probably belongs on this list somewhere. When I saw the title, Pat Listach was the first to pop in my head. He was BAD!

[mark]

I just don't know what more you want out of an MVP than what Bell did in 87? Name another player with better stats in 87? Bell almost got the Blue Jays to the playoffs that year with his bat. You don't expect a power hitter to have a gold glove, especially in the dead ball era of the 1980's. And his career numbers aren't bad either. It's not like he came out of nowhere nor did he fall apart the next year. He just peaked in 87.

[The Feed]

Redleg - Didn't even bother to check on Sanders since I knew he wasn't going to replace anyone on this list. Thanks for doing my job. Cordova's a worthy call.

Mark - It's not that he didn't deserve the MVP, not what this is about. His '87 season was a very good one. Check out Dave Kingman's stats and you'll see a pretty fair replica of Bell. He struck out more but his power and onbase numbers were pretty similar. I think Bell was a better player than Kingman but only marginally but don't think that type of player, a one-dimensional slugger is worth all that much. Bell won a MVP though and that's why he's here. If Kingman did he would be as well.

[DJ Hawk]

What about Eric Hinske,2002 Rookie of the Year. He makes Angel Berroa look like an allstar.

[The Feed]

DJ - No one makes Berroa look like an All Star. Hinske got a mention at the top but Berroa beat him out simply because Hinske is still wearing a big league uniform. That's gotta count for something.

[Eric]

I know you're not including Gold Gloves, but my god how did Rafael Palmeiro win a gold glove years back when he played like 30 games at first base!?

[Barry C]

Joe Charboneau hit 23 home runs for the Cleveland Indians in 1980 and won the American League Rookie of the Year Award. However, the next season he hit only .210 with 4 homers, and his major league career was over by 1982.

[ray]

Although it is true Konstanty was otherwise average except for 1950, his year was one of the most amazing ever for a relief pitcher, and he deserved to win MVP based on performance AND value to his team. 74 games, 155 IP, and a ridiculous WHIP and hits allowed per 9 innings, especially for that time. I rank his year right up there with the big Eck and Papelbon years.

[North Face Denali]

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