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Baseball's Worst Players of 2007The Top 10 Major League Disappointments During This SeasonJ.D. Drew, Andruw Jones and Jermaine Dye are all good players having terrible, terrible seasons. Here are the ten worst for the first half of the 2007 MLB season.
Everybody has a bad year every now and then. Especially Major Leaguers. Slumps and extended periods of time where it appears that a player has lost all of his skills are common to the game. The first half of 2007 has seen its share of prolonged slumps by some of the game's best players. And while it may seem that some or all of these players are finished forever, it is infinitely more likely that each of these guys will pop out of it and start hitting or pitching like it was 2006. Regardless of that, it's still a lot of fun to pick on rich guys who play baseball for a living, so here are the 10 worst players of 2007, so far. Number 10. Robinson Cano, New York Yankees The comparisons to Rod Carew have stopped. Cano, who hit .342 last season with 41 doubles, 15 home runs and 78 RBI (despite missing 40 games), has been a shadow of his former self at the plate in 2007. He's hitting just .276 and his OPS has dropped from last year's .890 to a very pedestrain .733. He's also hit just five homers, which is starting to raise questions about his true power potential. Number 9. Richie Sexson, Seattle Mariners In games where he playes at least 125 games, Sexson has averaged .272, 37 home runs and 117 RBI. Right now he is hitting .210 with 15 home runs and 48 RBI. At this pace, Sexson will finish at .210 with 29 homers and 95 RBI, which are all well below his career averages. Quick lesson: if you make more than $10 million and you are hitting .210, you are gonna be on this list. Number 8. Barry Zito, San Francisco Giants $141 million. Six wins and eight losses. An ERA of 4.65. Unacceptable. Number 7. Jason Kendall, Oakland Athletics Jason Kendall has never been much of a power hitter. Since the beginning of the 2002 season, he has hit a mere 15 home runs. That's not very good for a guy who is making more than $13 million a year. But Kendall could always hit for average. Coming into this season, he was a lifetime .300 hitter. Not worth $13 million, but with his defense and leadership, and the fact that he almost never strikes out, Kendall has always been a solid player. Until this year. This year, he's been awful, hitting just .225 with an on-base percentage of .263 and a slugging average of .280. Those numbers probably make him the most overpaid player in baseball. Number 6. Jermaine Dye, Chicago White Sox Dye was brilliant in 2006, hitting .315 with 44 home runs and 120 RBI. He's been abysmal in '07, with his mid-season numbers at .214 with 12 home runs and 39 RBI. That's pretty bad for such a good hitter. He's not alone on the South Side, though. Everybody from Paul Konerko to A.J. Pierzynski is way down this year. What's going on with the White Sox? Number 5. Julio Lugo, Boston Red Sox Another brilliant off-season acquisition by Theo Epstein, Lugo is hitting .190 with just four homers at the All-Star break, and recently endured an 0 for 33 streak. Number 4. Dontrelle Willis, Florida Marlins Since his thrilling 2005 campaign, Willis is just 19-19 with an ERA well above 4.00. Is he a streaky pitcher or just a pitcher who's not that good? Number 3. Joe Buck, Fox Sports This guy has a bad year every year. One of the worst announcers in history to garner such a high profile job, Buck leads the league in jokes that are not funny, failing to report what is going on in the game just so he can giggle foolishly with his on-air partner, and shamelessly sucking up to any team that is playing the Yankees. Number 2. Andruw Jones, Atlanta Braves Jones picked a bad time to go into a prolonged slump. He is a free agent at the end of this year, a season in which he is batting just .203. Had he been let loose on the market after '05 (51 HR and 128 RBI) or '06 (41 HR and 129 RBI), Jones could have commanded close to $20 million a season. Unless he picks it up -- substantially -- he is probably looking at half that amount. It's gonna be rough for Andruw to feed himself on just $10 million a year, so he better start hitting. Number 1. J.D. Drew, Boston Beaneaters Drew is lucky the Sox are so good this year. The rest of the guys are keeping the spotlight away from his 6 home runs and 33 RBI at the break. Those numbers shouldn't be very surprising, though. Drew has never been that good. In fact, he's been an oft-injured underachiever for most of his career. He had a strong year in 2006, and was able to sucker Theo Epstein into giving him $14 million a season over the next five years. At this point, only the Yankees would be stupid enough to take that contract. Congratulations to all of the guys who have disappointed their teams, their fans and their cities during the first half of 2007. Here's hoping they all come out of it in the next 80 games. ______________________
The copyright of the article Baseball's Worst Players of 2007 in Baseball is owned by James Lincoln Ray. Permission to republish Baseball's Worst Players of 2007 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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