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Is Chris Davis's 2018 season the worst ever?
Skin2
Posts: 1,259 ✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
Talking only seasons with minimum of 500 plate appearances. If you find a guy like 2011 Adam Dunn that falls short of 500 plate appearances, but is so compelling in his badness, then that is fine too.
Here is Davis's 2018 performance:
OPS+ 50
WAR -2.8
Win Probability -3.3
.168/.243/.296 line.
40 runs and 49 RBI while batting 5th for most of the time.
Note that the WAR and Win Probability are negative.
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Ray Oyler sucked at the plate in 1968 but was a competent shortstop.
If I get motivated, I'll look up some numbers.
.135 average but only a bit over 200 AB so I'll withdraw his name.
Are we taking nominations for the HOF?
http://www.unisquare.com/store/brick/
Ralph
Any player
Mario Mendoza?
I looked. Not Mendoza.
Ray Oyler. I mentioned him in the post above. He was my favorite ball player BTW. My dad asked me and my brother who our favorite Tiger was. He said Kaline, I said Ray Oyler. Got a ten minute spiel on why he sucked. That was reason enough to cheer the fellow on.
no
Believe it or not, Oyler was a 0.0 WAR player for his career. He was REALLY good defensively. But, yeah, way less 500 PAs.
It's hard to fathom somebody who played as poorly as Davis did actually getting to 500 PAs but he somehow managed it.
I give you Jim Levey, owner of a -3.9 WAR in 1933:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/leveyji01.shtml
His defense was atrocious, 58 errors in 1931, 47 in 1932, 'only' 42 in 1933.
At least he made up for that with his 24 OPS+ in 1933.
In Levey's defense (har har), 58/47/42 errors weren't all that unusual in the 1930s. The league leader in errors always had at least 48, sometimes well into the 60s. Levey himself only lead the league once (the 58 in 1931). Luke Appling, a HOFer, led the league in 1932 and 1933 with 49 and 55, respectively.
Yes.
There have been a small handful of players - Tabe found one - who were a little bit worse at the plate generations ago, but those were nobodies then and nobody remembers them now. But Davis makes $23,000,000 per year, and brought an entire team to its knees; not just this year, but for years to come. If you define "worst season" as the one any GM or owner would most want to not happen to his team, it's Davis in a landslide.
BTW, whoever agreed to pay Davis $23,000,000 per year was an idiot. Not as big an idiot as the guy who signed Ryan Howard to his last contract, but an idiot nonetheless.
Correct. There may have been other seasons as bad or worse, but that 23,000,000 through 2023 i believe is crippling. I also remember Mike Hampton signed a 100 million dollar contract in around 2000 and didnt really produce anything after. really makes you wonder about the value of giving Harper/Machado $300 million plus.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
An OPS+ of 24....is pretty darn impressive, lol. That is a good find. Plus that guy had another season almost equally as bad as that one.
Yeah, I agree with this. The level of performance versus level of compensation is staggering. And that they kept running him out there...