Worst Members of the 400 HR Club

[StanMarsh51]

Inspired by Soriano recently being DFA'd by the Yankees, I was curious to see who the worst players with 400 HR are..

Roids debate aside, there are 51 players with 400+ HR....is it as easy as saying Kingman, Soriano, Dunn, Soriano, and Konerko (in no specific order)?

 

[Nosferatu]

Cal Ripken & Darrell Evans

 

[navamind]

Cal Ripken & Darrell Evans

...seriously?

 

[navamind]

Inspired by Soriano recently being DFA'd by the Yankees, I was curious to see who the worst players with 400 HR are..

Roids debate aside, there are 51 players with 400+ HR....is it as easy as saying Kingman, Soriano, Dunn, Soriano, and Konerko(in no specific order)?

Kingman seems like an obvious worst, maybe Dunn.

I guess Soriano was so "bad", he merits being mentioned twice?

 

[StanMarsh51]

Cal Ripken & Darrell Evans

I'd say there are easily more than a handful of players worse than those two in the 400 club.

 

[obxyankeefan]

Kingman seems like an obvious worst, maybe Dunn.

I guess Soriano was so "bad", he merits being mentioned twice?

I was trying to figure who the second Soriano was.

 

[StanMarsh51]

Kingman seems like an obvious worst, maybe Dunn.

I guess Soriano was so "bad", he merits being mentioned twice?

Haha, he gets a mention for each stint with the Yankees.

 

[WhiteMamba]

Think you all covered it.

 

[obxyankeefan]

No mention of Andruw Jones?


I would also questiion McGwire. Yes he had 583 homers, but what else did he give you?

 

[navamind]

No mention of Andruw Jones?


I would also questiion McGwire. Yes he had 583 homers, but what else did he give you?

Jones was one of the worst hitters of the 400+ club (even then, he still had a career 111 OPS+, which is still quite good from CF), but Jones is arguably the best defensive CF of all-time. Even with his sharp decline, he should be in the HOF IMO. He had a really good peak.

As for McGwire, he also gave you a .394 OBP (81st all-time).

 

[StanMarsh51]

No mention of Andruw Jones?


I would also questiion McGwire. Yes he had 583 homers, but what else did he give you?

If Andruw Jones were a mediocre fielding 1B, he'd probably be the worst...but being arguably one of the two best defensive CFers ever safely removes him from being among the worst.

 

[springfieldisotopes83]

Kingman, Soriano, J Gonzalez

 

[Nosferatu]

...seriously?

Yes seriously, Ripken is one of the most overrated players of all time and Evans played forever and averaged 20 HR's a year he has a career BA of .248. Kingman and Dunn were already mentioned. No way Soriano should be on that list.

 

[Howie115]

Cal Ripken & Darrell Evans

I'd go with Kingman over either of those two. Evans only hit for a .248 average, but could play both 3B and 1B quite well. He also drew a ton of walks (12 seasons with 80+, 5 seasons with 100+), and had more walks than strikeouts in his career (1605 to 1410).

Not saying Evans is HoF material by any stretch, but he was better than the .248 BA suggests.

 

[springfieldisotopes83]

Yes seriously, Ripken is one of the most overrated players of all time and Evans played forever and averaged 20 HR's a year he has a career BA of .248. Kingman and Dunn were already mentioned. No way Soriano should be on that list.

Whether he's overrated completely depends on who's rating him. When someone says player XYZ is one of the most overrated players; typically means that the person saying it is grossly underrating that player.

Regardless, the question wasn't who is the most overrated player in the 400 HR club, it's who is the worst member. Even if you think Ripken is grossly overrated, I don't see how that puts him anywhere near the worst member of the 400 HR club. The guy has the 24th best bWAR of all time for position players.

 

[StanMarsh51]

I'd go with Kingman over either of those two. Evans only hit for a .248 average, but could play both 3B and 1B quite well. He also drew a ton of walks (12 seasons with 80+, 5 seasons with 100+), and had more walks than strikeouts in his career (1605 to 1410).

Not saying Evans is HoF material by any stretch, but he was better than the .248 BA suggests.

Yea, even with the .248 AVG, Evans had an .361 OBP (very good for 1970s-1980s standards) while playing more than half his career at 3B (which gives him a boost).

And 20-25 HR today might not seem like a lot, but in his era many years it was...he finished top 10 in HRs numerous times while hitting less than 30 HR.

 

[Howie115]

Yea, even with the .248 AVG, Evans had an .361 OBP (very good for 1970s-1980s standards) while playing more than half his career at 3B (which gives him a boost).

At the time of his retirement, Darrell was 11th all-time in total career walks. He averaged 97 BB per 162 games.

 

[navamind]

Yes seriously, Ripken is one of the most overrated players of all time and Evans played forever and averaged 20 HR's a year he has a career BA of .248. Kingman and Dunn were already mentioned. No way Soriano should be on that list.

And he still managed a .361 OBP, a more important stat than BA.

Evans had a 119 OPS+, higher than other 3rd basemen like Ken Boyer, Brooks Robinson, Aramis Ramirez, and Adrian Beltre.

And Ripken overrated? He was one of the better hitting shortstops (among shortstops with 6000+ PA, he's 17th in wRC+) and he was a great defender to boot. He's 2nd in WAR behind only Wagner (3rd if you count A-Rod).

 

[broncosmitty]

Soriano and Jones for me.

 

[navamind]

The only 400+ HR club members with fewer WAR than Soriano are Kingman, Konerko*, and Dunn. Soriano's had some real good years ('02, '03, '06, '07, '08) and some real ugly ones ('09, '01, '11, and '14).

*If we're going to call anyone in this thread overrated, I think he's the most obvious one. He's the very epitome of a compiler, he was an average player throughout much of his career save for a couple years. Even in some of his best offensive years, some of his value provided on offense was negated by his horrible baserunning/hitting into double plays/defense.