MLB: The Worst Players on Every AL Team

With a quarter of the MLB season left, these are the worst players to grace the American League this year.

You know the guy on your team. He’s the hitter who comes up to bat in a clutch situation and pops out to second. He’s the fielder who lets a ball clank off his glove at the worst time, or makes a diving stop only to throw it into the seats behind home. Maybe he’s the starting pitcher who keeps getting rocked, start after start after start, or the reliever who pours gasoline on every fire. He’s the guy in MLB who’s having the worst season of anyone on your favorite team. He’s your team’s worst player.

Sometimes good players have surprisingly bad years. A guy like Justin Upton can be an above average player for seven straight years and then suddenly lose his ability to hit. Because he’s been so good for so long, he sticks in the lineup and continues to drag the team down. A good pitcher may get bit by the home run bug and his ERA skyrockets. In that same vein, a pitcher can have bad luck on balls in play, leading to a high BABIP, and his ERA goes up along with it.

Just as every team has to have a best player in a given year, every team must have a worst player. The following list contains the player having the worst season for each team in the American League so far this year. To create this list, I started with the two versions of Wins Above Replacement, Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs, to narrow the list down, then made my choice from those players. For pitchers, I used the Fangraphs WAR based on Runs Allowed rather than FIP because I want to judge the players based on what has actually happened this year.

Next: A Horrible Oriole

SP Ubaldo Jimenez, 5-10, 6.94 ERA, 1.91 WHIP in 94 2/3 innings

-1.3 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.2 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

Some teams have a number of candidates for the title of worst player, but Ubaldo Jimenez is running away from the competition on the Orioles. He’s been incredibly bad. With an ERA near 7.00 and a WHIP near 2.00, the most surprising thing about Jimenez’ season is that he actually won five games. And he pitched well in those five wins. It wasn’t a matter of the Orioles bludgeoning the other team to victory. In Jimenez’ five victories, he has a 2.03 ERA.

Of course, the four teams Jimenez has defeated are the Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, Kansas City Royals, and San Diego Padres (twice). Of those teams, only the Twins are in the upper half of baseball in runs scored. The Padres (20^th), Athletics (26^th), and Royals (27^th) are all pretty far down the list.

The other problem with the few good starts that Jimenez has had this year are that they came on April 7, May 7, June 7, June 22, and June 28. For a while there, he only had a good start about once a month. Staring Ubaldo Jimenez was like playing a slot machine. Win, lose, lose, lose, win, lose, lose, lose, win, lose, win, win, lose, lose, lose. It wins just often enough that you keep on playing. The good news for Orioles’ fans is that Jimenez has been moved to the bullpen and has only pitched three times in the last 22 days.

Next: The Boston Massacre

SP Clay Buchholz, 4-9, 5.66 ERA, 1.41 WHIP in 95 1/3 innings

-0.2 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.4 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

Over the last five years, Buchholz has settled into a Bret Saberhagen-like pattern of alternating good and bad years. Buchholz’ ERA has fluctuated greatly since 2011: 3.48, 4.56, 1.74, 5.34, 3.26, and 5.42. This is one of the bad years. Not only is it a bad year, it’s a very strange year for Buchholz. Over his career, he generally hasn’t had trouble with home runs, with a career 9.9 percent HR/FB rate. This year, his HR/FB rate is 13.2 percent. He’s also had a very different year when it comes to strikeouts and walks. Last year, he struck out 22.8 percent of the batters he faced and walked just 4.9 percent. This year, he’s struck out 14.5 percent and walked 10.1 percent.

Buchholz made 10 starts at the beginning of the year and was 2-5 with a 6.35 ERA through May 26. The Sox then put him in the bullpen and he’s been a bit better since, but still not great. He’s back in the rotation now because Steven Wright is on the DL. Buchholz did have a good start on Thursday when he limited the Detroit Tigers to one run in six innings. For the Red Sox sake, maybe he can keep pitching well because the poor performance by Buchholz is one of the reasons the Red Sox are fighting for a Wild Card spot instead of leading the AL East.

Next: Chicago's Little Game James

James Shields, 3-8, 7.62 ERA, 1.82 WHIP in 69 2/3 IP (w/White Sox)

-1.1 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.2 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

Shields famously got destroyed in his first three starts with the White Sox after being acquired in a trade with the Padres in early June. In those three starts, he gave up 21 earned runs in 8 2/3 innings (21.80 ERA). He then settled down and had a good stretch of seven starts. From June 23 to July 26, Shields was 3-3 with a 2.11 ERA and 1.13 WHIP. It looked like Shields had figured something out.

Then, just when you thought it was safe to rely on Shields again, he got blown up four times in a row in his first four starts in August. He gave up six earned in five innings to the Tigers. The Orioles bashed him around for eight runs on four homers in 1 1/3 innings on August 7. In his next start, he gave up seven earned to the Marlins in just three innings. He topped it off by allowing six earned runs on three homers in 4 2/3 innings against the Athletics. This most recent four game stretch was almost as bad as his initial three games with the White Sox.

Shields had problems giving up home runs early in his career, but seemed to get better at it over a four-year stretch from 2011 to 2014. Over the last two years, his gopher-itis has returned. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Shields has allowed 62 home runs in 339 2/3 innings. No pitcher in baseball has allowed more dingers. Shields even gave up the only home run Bartolo Colon has ever hit:

In the interest of fairness, outfielder J.B. Shuck should get a dishonorable mention here. According to the two versions of WAR, Shuck has hurt the White Sox about as much as Shields has. Shuck is hitting .218/.254/.322 in 215 plate appearances.

Next: Cleveland's Batless Backstop

C Yan Gomes, .165/.198/.313, 21 R, 8 HR, 32 RBI in 262 PA

-0.6 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.8 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) 

Way back in 2013, Yan Gomes was a 25-year-old catcher who hit .294/.345/.481 in 88 games. Coming off that season, Cleveland signed Gomes to a 6-year, $23 million contract, plus two club option years that would add on $20 million (or be bought out for $2 million). The next season, he was an above average hitter when he hit .278/.313/.472. He also played a career-high 135 games and set career highs in runs scored (61), home runs (21), and RBI (74). The Indians were likely very happy that they’d locked him into a team-friendly contract for years to come.

Then came the 2015 season and a .231/.267/.391 batting line. Gomes went from a 4.5 fWAR player to a 0.8 fWAR player. He’s been even worse this year, well below replacement level. Gomes has now struggled to hit for a year-and-a-half. For all catchers with 500 plate appearances going back to the start of last year, Gomes is at the very bottom in weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+).

This statistic takes everything a hitter does and condenses it into one number that is adjusted for league and ballpark and set on a scale where 100 is league average. Gomes was 28 percent better than league average in 2013 (128 wRC+). This year, his wRC+ is 30, the worst in baseball for players with at least 250 plate appearances. Now that team-friendly deal doesn’t look so friendly.

Yan Gomes was injured shortly after the All-Star Break (and not long after he sacrificed a chicken to try to break out of his slump). He’s been participating in light baseball activities, but has a long ways to go before getting back behind the dish for Cleveland.

Next: Toothless Tiger

OF Justin Upton, .226/.281/.371, 52 R, 13 HR, 46 RBI in 470 PA

-1.1 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.6 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

Statistically, Mike Aviles and Mark Lowe have hurt the Tigers as much as Justin Upton this season, but they aren’t being paid $22.125 million per year for the next six years. Upton has fallen off a cliff like few players have in the recent past.

It’s not as bad as the infamous Adam Dunn debacle of 2011. Dunn went from hitting .260/.356/.536 in 2010 with the Washington Nationals to hitting .159/.292/.277 with the Chicago White Sox. His wRC+ dropped from 136 to 60. Upton has seen his wRC+ drop from 120 to 71.

The red flags for Upton this year include the lowest walk rate of his career (6.6%) and the highest strikeout rate of his career (29.8%). That’s never a good combination. Unfortunately, August has been particularly bad for Upton. It’s a small sample, but in 15 games Upton his hitting .130/.190/.130 in August. This followed what looked to be progress. Upton’s previous worst month was April. He improved in May, then again in June and again in July. In fact, in July Upton looked like the Upton of old. He hit .278/.320/.522.

Upton’s success at the plate in July coincided with the Tigers going 16-10, for their best monthly winning percentage of the year. In his terrible August, the Tigers have gone 7-9. If Tigers’ fans are looking for a reason to have some optimism regarding Upton, they can look back to Adam Dunn. After dropping off the cliff in 2011, he rebounded to become an above average hitter again in 2012.

Next: Awful Astro

OF Preston Tucker, .164/.222/.328 in 144 PA

-0.8 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.2 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

If you’re an Astros fan, you were probably expecting to see an outfielder as the team’s worst player this season and you would be right. Surprisingly, it’s not the recently released Carlos Gomez. As bad as Gomez was, Tucker has been even worse. He isn’t hitting and hasn’t been good in the field either.

Over the season’s first six weeks, Tucker hit .176/.213/.353 in 33 games. He was having a terrible time managing the strike zone, with 26 strikeouts and just four walks in 89 plate appearances. The Astros sent him to the minors and he hit .301/.349/.512 with AAA Fresno. The team brought him back up in July, hoping for a spark, but Tucker hit .143/.236/.286 over his next 15 games before heading to the DL with a strained shoulder.

Tucker has good minor league numbers in his career, even at the highest levels. He’s played parts of three seasons in AAA and has hit .294/.354/.489, with 26 homers in 159 games. It hasn’t translated to big league success so far. His career major league batting line is .219/.274/.403.

As for Carlos Gomez, he would get the runner’s-up trophy in this competition. He has a higher profile than Tucker, and Houston fans probably blame him more for their disappointing season, but he was better at the plate and in the field than Tucker has been in 2016.

Next: Royal Mess

SS Alcides Escobar, .259/.289/.317, 43 R, 2 HR, 34 RBI, 14 SB in 532 PA

-0.6 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.5 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

The main contenders for the worst player on the Royals in 2016 are Alcides Escobar and Chris Young. Young started the year in the Kansas City rotation, but was shifted to the bullpen after going 2-8 with a 6.90 ERA. He gave up 26 home runs in 60 innings. It was like every batter he faced was Giancarlo Stanton in the Home Run Derby. He gave up four or more home runs in three different starts.

Mercifully, after that horrendous start to the year, Young was shifted to the bullpen to primarily pitch in low leverage situations and has done much better. He hasn’t allowed a home run in 15 2/3 innings going back to July 10.

With Young safely put away in the deep recesses of the bullpen, Alcides Escobar takes the mantle of worst player on the Royals. Escobar has been just a little worse than he usually is, particularly on defense. In past years, even when he didn’t hit a lick, his defense kept him above replacement level overall. That isn’t true this year. His on-base percentage (.289) and slugging percentage (.317) are both among the worst marks of his career and his defense hasn’t been good enough to counteract that.

Despite a .289 OBP that is fifth-worst among qualified hitters, Escobar has batted leadoff 82 times and in the number two spot 14 times. This is not unusual for Escobar and the Royals. Ned Yost likes him at the top of the lineup. The Royals won last year’s World Series and came within a Madison Bumgarner of winning it in 2014, so Yost likely didn’t want to change something that seemed to be working.

It should be noted that Escobar has not batted leadoff since August 7. He’s been in the number eight spot more often than not and is hitting .306/.375/.389 in a small sample size of 10 games.

Next: Flightless Angel

SP Tim Lincecum, 2-6, 9.16 ERA, 2.37 WHIP in 38 1/3 IP

-1.5 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.5 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) 

Tim Lincecum is like that guy who shows up to play for your rec league softball team because your starting shortstop got tickets to Coachella and you need a replacement. You’ve heard this Lincecum guy can play ball, so you’re looking forward to having him on the team. He smacks a double in his first at bat, then makes a nice play in the field in the bottom of the inning. You’re feeling pretty good, thinking, ‘this guy can play.’

Then he botches a double-play ball, lets a grounder go through his legs, and throws one into the parking lot behind first base. His second time up, he hits weakly back to the pitcher. His third time up, he pops out to the catcher. It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Finally, you pull him from the lineup and put in your girlfriend’s dad.

The Angels signed Lincecum to a one-year deal in late May. He was coming off hip surgery and hadn’t pitched since last June. The Angels were desperate for help in their rotation and gave him a shot. They were pleasantly surprised when he won his first start, going six innings and allowing just a single run against the Oakland Athletics.

That was the highlight of his season. He started eight more games and gave up at least four runs in six of them. He walked too many, gave up too many home runs, and had a BABIP of .432. His fastball velocity is about five miles per hour off of his peak and he doesn’t have the command to make up for it. It’s been a sad decline for the two-time Cy Young winner. It’s easy to forget just how good he was at one time:

Lincecum has hurt the Angels more than any other player, but a couple of other pitchers have also been quite awful. Huston Street has the worst ERA and lowest strikeout rate of his career. Jered Weaver is striking out just 4.5 batters per nine innings and his average fastball velocity is 82.7 mph, just seven miles per hour faster than R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball.

Next: Terrible Twin

SP Jose Berrios, 2-3, 9.28 ERA, 1.94 WHIP in 32 IP

-1.0 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.0 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

When you have the worst record in the American League, you’re going to have some competition for the Worst Player Award on your team. I chose Jose Berrios, but it could have been fellow pitchers Tommy Milone (3-4, 5.68 ERA, 1.55 WHIP) or Kevin Jepsen (2-5, 4 blown saves, 5.22 ERA, 1.59 WHIP). In fact, I originally chose Danny Santana (.256/.298/.351), but Berrios was lit up again on Friday, so it’s got to be the rookie.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Jose Berrios. He’s been a top-100 prospect in each of the last two years, ranking #36 before 2015 and #28 before this season by Baseball America. MLB.com had him as the #19 prospect before this year and Baseball Prospectus liked him even more, placing him 17^th.

Berrios started this season at AAA Rochester and pitched well in his first three starts, going 2-0 with a 1.06 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 17 innings. That got him moved up to the big club. He got four starts with the Twins in April and May that resulted in an ERA over 10.00, so he was sent back to AAA. He once again pitched well at Rochester, going 8-5 with a 2.71 ERA and 91 strikeouts in 86 1/3 innings. The Twins brought him back up and he’s given up 16 earned runs in 17 innings.

It’s been a rough introduction to the big leagues for Berrios. He just hasn’t been able to translate his success in AAA into success in the Major Leagues. With the Twins playing out a lost season, it will be interesting to see if they continue to roll him out there.

Next: Damn Yankee

1B Yonder Alonso, .255/.316/.371, 37 R, 6 HR, 42 RBI in 399 PA

-0.6 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.2 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

The Athletics have had worse players than Alonso this season. Chris Coghlan was the absolute worst. He hit .146/.215/.272 in 172 plate appearances with the team (29 wRC+) and was not an asset in the field either. He was worth -1.5 WAR based on both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference. Coghlan was traded to the Cubs in June and has been much better in Chicago because it’s been that kind of year for the Cubs.

Jed Lowrie has also been worse than Alonso, with a .263/.314/.322 batting line (76 wRC+) and below average defense. He’s currently on the 60-day DL. A third player having a bad year for the A’s who could have claimed this title is Eric Surkamp, the left-hander who was 0-5 with a 6.98 ERA and 1.97 WHIP in nine starts. He was designated for assignment in late June and lost off waivers to the Texas Rangers.

With those three players no longer occupying an active roster spot with the A’s, it comes down to their weak-hitting first baseman, Yonder Alonso. Among the 22 first baseman who have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, Alonso ranks at the very bottom with an 86 wRC+. He’s been 14 percent below league average as a hitter and not particularly good in the field. He’s the only first baseman among these 22 who has not hit at least 10 home runs and he has the fewest runs scored and fewest RBI.

The unfortunate thing is that Alonso’s season is not that far off of his career numbers. He’s just never had the power that other players at his position have and, at 29 years old, it doesn’t look like he ever will.

Next: Seattle's Struggling Slugger

Adam Lind, .235/.273/.444, 40 R, 18 HR, 48 RBI in 330 PA

-0.5 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.0 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) 

The Mariners haven’t had any really awful players this year. They tried to see if there was anything left in the tanks of veteran relievers Joel Peralta and Joaquin Benoit, but neither pitched well for the team. Peralta was released in June. Benoit was traded to the Blue Jays in late July.

With those two out of contention, Adam Lind steps up as the worst player on the Mariners this season. Lind’s struggles are primarily with his ability to get on base, which had been an asset in each of the last three seasons when he hit .291/.364/.478 for the Blue Jays and Brewers. This year, he is hitting .235/.273/.444. His 4.8 percent walk rate is the second-worst of his career and he’s striking out more often than he has since 2010.

The one bright point has been his power. He’s on pace to hit 24 home runs. He’s also hit two walk-off home runs, including a pinch-hit walk-off against David Robertson of the Chicago White Sox that he celebrated with a batting helmet basketball shot.

Lind’s home/road splits are interesting to look at this year. Many players have trouble hitting at Safeco Field. This year, Safeco has a runs-park factor of .898, according to ESPN.com. Going against the norm, Lind has hit much better at home than on the road. At Safeco Field, Lind is hitting .282/.325/.577 compared to .192/.226/.311 on the road. That’s more of an interesting note than anything meaningful, especially for just two-thirds of a season, but it is strange.

Next: Rally-Killing Ray

1B Logan Morrison, .228/.307/.375, 37 R, 10 HR, 35 RBI in 345 PA

-0.0 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.1 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

The Rays have a few relief pitchers who have been worse than Morrison, but they are either no longer on the big league roster (Dana Eveland and Steve Geltz) or haven’t pitched that much this year (Danny Farquhar). Morrison is the white elephant gift that keeps on giving.

With an 88 wRC+, Morrison ranks 25^th among the 30 first baseman with 340 or more plate appearances this season. He’s in the bottom five in runs scored, home runs, and RBI and he doesn’t make up for it by being good with the glove as he’s been below average on defense his entire career. In fact, Morrison is having almost the same exact year as he had last year, when he hit .225/.302/.383. Sadly, this is who he is.

Once upon a time, Logan Morrison hit .259/.351/.460 in 185 games during his first two seasons in the Major Leagues. Since then, he’s hit .237/.312/.391 in 513 games. He now has four-plus years of below-average hitting. Perhaps he’s a great guy in the clubhouse and contributes some off-field value that makes up for his sub-par hitting and fielding. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the year, so we’ll see how many teams line up to acquire his particular set of skills.

Next: Texas' Sweet Prince

Prince Fielder, .212/.292/.334, 29 R, 8 HR, 44 RBI in 370 PA

-1.9 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-1.4 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR)

Texas is a team that has a few strong contenders for worst player. There’s the sad case of Prince Fielder, who takes the crown, but a couple of relief pitchers have been quite awful as well. Shawn Tolleson went from leading the team in saves last year with a 2.99 ERA to blowing up this year with a 7.68 ERA. He is currently on the DL in AAA. Tom Wilhelmsen had 13 saves and a 3.19 ERA with the Seattle Mariners in 2015. He started this year with the Texas Rangers and was beat and battered for a 10.55 ERA in 21 1/3 innings.

The Rangers outrighted him to the minors in June, but Wilhelmsen elected to become a free agent and signed with the Mariners. He’s been good so far with the M’s, with a 1.48 ERA in 18 1/3 innings.

Tolleson and Wilhelmsen were bad for the Rangers this year, but Fielder was worse. Based on Fangraphs WAR, Fielder is right there with Alexei Ramirez as the worst position player in baseball (-1.9 fWAR). He primarily played Designated Hitter but he didn’t do any hitting and “Hitter” is right there in the name of the position. The hitting part is kind of a big deal. His 63 wRC+ is far below the next-worse DH (Corey Dickerson, 89 wRC+).

Of course, we know now that injuries have been a big part of Fielder’s struggles. The guy who once had eight straight years in which he played 157 or more games each year missed significant time in two of the last three seasons and is now retired at the age of 32. His goodbye to baseball, with his two young sons sitting by his side, was an emotional moment for Prince and the baseball fans who have appreciated him over the years.

With Fielder, Tolleson, and Wilhelmsen no longer with the team, the current worst player on the Rangers is probably Nick Martinez. As the bottom man on the totem pole, Martinez has started in five of his seven games and is 1-3 with a 7.18 ERA.

Next: Toronto Blah Jay

2B Ryan Goins, .175/.213/.301, 12 R, 3 HR, 12 RBI in 176 PA

-0.7 fWAR (Fangraphs WAR)

-0.6 bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) 

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Ryan Goins was the Blue Jays’ main starter at second base in April and May while Devon Travis recovered from an injury. When Travis played his first game on May 25, Goins was hitting .148/.197/.235 in 41 games. The addition of Travis cut into Goins playing time, rightfully so, and an injury put him on the DL in July. When Goins came off the DL, he was sent to the minors.

He was recalled on Friday and went 1-for-3, which raised his batting line to .175/.213/.301, for a wRC+ of 30. He’s good with the glove, but his bat mitigates whatever value his glove brings. If you want to be optimistic, you could point to his .302/.351/.442 hitting while in AAA Buffalo before being recalled. If you’re more of a “glasses half empty” person, you could note that he’s a career .222/.268/.324 hitter in 915 plate appearances.

Next: Cubs' Bryant MLB's Best Hitter?

There is one position player who is challenging Goins for the worst player award—catcher Josh Thole, hitting .155/.254/.204. Thole actually has a lower wRC+ than Goins but has played less this season so hasn’t had as much time to hurt the team. Like Goins, Thole has an above-average glove, but his bat has been bad enough to make his overall value below replacement level.