FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: September 13, 2025
When Gerardo Parra took the mound for the Nationals on August 3, 2019, with his team trailing 11-4 in the eighth inning in Arizona, he had no way of knowing the dubious history he was about to make in the only pitching appearance of his 12-year career. He walked the first three batters he faced, allowed an RBI single to Alex Avila, and then walked Diamondbacks reliever Zack Godley to bring home another run. That was enough for manager Davey Martinez, who opted to replace Parra on the bump with second baseman Brian Dozer to face the lefty-hitting Jarrod Dyson. To set up his desired defensive alignment without making a substitution, Martinez moved third baseman Anthony Rendon to the keystone and sent the left-handed Parra to the hot corner — a position he’d never played before. Dyson doubled home two runs, both charged to Parra. As switch-hitter Ketel Marte stepped into the right-handed batter’s box to face Dozer’s floaters, Martinez flipped Rendon and Parra, who then made his first and only career appearance at second. Marte flied out to right before Eduardo Escobar, a switch-hitter also batting right-handed, launched a three-run homer, with the first of those runs also landing on Parra’s ledger.
Of course, three months later, the Nationals would win their first and only World Series championship, with Parra conducting rousing renditions of “Baby Shark” every time he batted in Washington, but on that particular early-August night, things got ugly. With his final line of zero innings, five runs (all earned), four walks, and one hit, Parra became one of only three players to allow five or more runs without recording an out in their only career pitching appearance.
I bring this up because the first question in this week’s mailbag is about the worst major league pitcher ever. Parra is not the answer because he was not really a pitcher, but his outing was a fun bit of trivia I came across in my research, so I had no choice but to share it with you. Before we get to the actual worst-pitcher-ever candidates, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
The first paragraph is Immaculate Grid manna.
I like how Jim Thome is almost the answer to “who is the greatest platoon lefty of all time” because he is on the short list for the answer to “who is the greatest hitter against right handed pitching of all time?”
The actual answer to “who was the best against right handed pitchers” is probably—depending on what your historical exclusions are—Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, or Mickey Mantle. But with that split, Thome is pretty high up there in the modern, 162-game, integrated MLB. He has got a 4:3 ratio based on the splits above, and he is sixth in wRAA from 1962 to the present, and he is within 70 wRAA of the #2 player (Frank Thomas). This is in the territory of calling up extra LOOGYs from AAA to have a chance against Jim Thome.
I just like how the idea of “Ted Williams is much worse against lefties” is immediately followed up by the idea of “good luck finding a righty with better than a .926 OPS against lefties to platoon him with!”
“The Ted Williams / Dave Harris platoon was unveiled today at Fenway Park, and it’s about time. When the game is on the line, you can’t trust Ted Williams to make the clutch hits against left handed pitching.”
-All Boston sports columnists
Yeah, I think ratio between the two sides might have been better than difference, no one is platooning Ted Williams unless they put him back in the lineup at 50 or something.
Thinking through this for fun, I think the best possible platoon mate would be Hank Aaron.
I did not know I had asked a two part question!
I was really thinking of only position players as possible “worst evers.” Bad hitters can stick around because of positional flexibility, perceived defensive excellence, or base running. Or, as we learned, plating catcher. Three of the five tools don’t involve a bat.
But bad pitchers have nothing to fall back on if they can’t get guys out and give up a lot of runs, so it is harder for them to have a long, bad, career. It is also harder to hide and argue “actually, the metrics say this guy is good!”
That said, I like “no, not that” Pat Mahomes as a choice here.
I like how Mills, Mahomes, and Williams all pitched in MLB for several overlapping years. Truly a golden age
I think it’s going to be very hard to argue with Pat Mahomes. Seriously, what were they thinking?! It is harder to justify having a bad pitcher out there than a bad hitter because you lose the game much faster.
But I would like to throw in a nomination for the Top 5: Lance Cormier. There are other pitchers who were far worse on a rate basis but he kept getting chances and I have no idea why. He was terrible in Arizona, then he was terrible in Atlanta. He put together a middle-reliever caliber year in Baltimore and his first year for the Rays, and then was terrible for the Rays. And somehow after all that the Dodgers ran him out there for a dozen innings the following year.
I don’t understand how teams kept giving him a chance. It kind of worked out for the Orioles because they converted him to relief full time and that worked out for a brief period of time. But he somehow got 468 innings with a career ERA of 5.07 and a FIP of 5.25.
That’s a good one.
Current guy- Joey Wentz is on the same trajectory..He’s about 170 innings short of Cormier, but, he’s left handed, so I figure he’ll get more chances next year.
I’m kind of hoping bad teams keep taking chances on Roddery Munoz. But I don’t think it will happen, as he will be out of options soon. You would have to have truly game-breaking stuff to keep getting chances with his pitching performance when you’re out of options.
Cormier is 9th on our list of worst WAR among pitchers with between 7-9 seasons and 29th among all pitchers. Right behind him on the complete list is another guy you mentioned in a different comment: Roddery Muñoz, who has -1.89 WAR in just two seasons. Yeesh.
Jon Becker did an incredible job pulling all the data I used for this piece and last week’s, and there’s so much that I couldn’t include here. Maybe I’ll return to this topic during the doldrums of the offseason. Thanks for reading!
Hell yeah!
26 man roster made up of the worst MLB players ever. All 9 batters, 4 bench players (including a catcher), 5 starters, 8 relievers.
Then let them play the Notgraphs roster of Adam Dunns in OOTP. Every game would be 23 – 21.
I’m going to argue with Pat Mahomes. fWAR and its FIP-based methodology are pretty good for predictions, but if we’re judging the worst ever pitchers we want results, and that means runners crossing the plate. Mahomes is at -0.4 pitching bWAR total (plus 0.5 batting) and though I’m not sure why–his ERA wasn’t far under his FIP–that’s not worst ever territory. Mills and Williams are outright respectable by bWAR.
So I tried the following methodology:
Set minimum 500 innings
sort by negative RA9 WAR
discover that the worst few are 19th-century guys with weird stats and strand rates in the 40s
restrict the search to 1900 on
and my nominee is Mike Kekich. Pitched 860 innings in parts of 11 seasons to an ERA of 4.59, which might not sound so bad, but this includes a 3.91 ERA in the Year of the Pitcher. -5.3 RA9 WAR and -4.4 pitching bWAR for his career. 0.5 fWAR but his bWAR+fWAR is still below Mahomes’s. And though he doesn’t have “father of one of the greatest quarterbacks ever” on his trivia card, he does have “best remembered for trading wives with his teammate Fritz Peterson,” according to his Wikipedia article.
The wife swap thing on his Wiki page is one of the most bizarre details I’ve ever read in a 4 paragraph biography. Thank you for sharing.
I am looking at Mahomes’ page now and it makes no sense that he only has -0.8 RA9 WAR. It looks like the culprit is 1994, where he *walked more batters than he struck out* for the Twins and escaped with a 4.73 ERA.
I think I’m going to stick with Mahomes, he had six different years with negative RA9 WAR and one truly fluky year which isn’t anything like the rest of them and in which he clearly got incredibly lucky. But Kekich was also clearly very bad.
Yeah, Mahomes’s disparity is weird. Alan Mills and Mitch Williams had sub-270 BABIPs when the league average was around 280 (or 290 in the latter part of Mills’ career) while Mahomes… well I guess Mahomes averaged 284 in that 290ish era, and his BABIP bounced around way more than those other guys. Happy to say that that was mostly luck for him. And I guess his RA9 WAR/fWAR spread wasn’t as high as those guys, who had career RA9 WAR of 6+.
Kekich’s BABIP doesn’t look so outliery but league BABIP was way lower when he was pitching. I did miscount–he only pitched parts of nine seasons so he’s not Hall-eligible. RA9 WAR below replacement all but one year.
Somewhat weak sauce to show Mahomes in a Mets jersey. He played only two seasons for the Mets, during one of which he was actually pretty good, albeit lucky. He pitched much more for the Twins. But, hey, I get it, he was a journeyman.
Yeah, unfortunately, through our photo service we only had access to photos of Mahomes with the Mets. Otherwise, I would’ve gone with him in a Twins jersey.
Plot twist: The only photos that exist of Mahomes are when he was with the Mets
Thanks for the reply!
Honestly as a Mets fan this has worked out well so I can show people the better maholmes in a Mets jersey.
I kind of want to put together an elite platoon team. Here’s what I’m thinking as rules:
1) Every single player needs at least a 30 point difference between their career wRC+ splits between left handers and right handers.
2) The weaker side can’t have a career wRC+ above 100.
3) Minimum 600 PAs against the platoon half where you would play them
You can substitute in an OPS equivalent for wRC+ if you have a Stathead subscription, which would allow you to use more years. The FG splits only go back to 2002. I’ll put mine in a comment below.
This is just from 2002 to the present:
1B: Ryan Howard (138 vs RHP),
2B: Jazz Chisholm (120 vs RHP)
3B: Corey Koskie (127 vs RHP),
SS: Gunnar Henderson (148 vs RHP)
LF: Shin-Soo Choo (138 vs LHP)
CF: Jarren Duran (128 vs RHP), Enrique Hernandez (111 vs LHP)
RF: Andre Ethier (139 vs RHP), Cody Ross (138 vs LHP)
DH: Austin Meadows
UTIL: Eric Chavez (123 vs RHP), Jason Bartlett (119 vs RHP), Jordy Mercer (121 vs RHP)
I’m very much looking forward to the day I decide to platoon Eric Chavez in favor of Ryan Howard. I thought about Kerry Carpenter at DH, but realistically if I get stuck against a left handed pitcher I would much, much rather have Austin Meadows (or Jack Cust, although I think Austin Meadows can back up LF better than Cust).
This lineup would be awesome until the relievers start coming in from the other side, at which point I would have to make decisions that would mean I have either very unfavorable matchups or run the risk of running out of position players to sub in. This team would basically have to get ahead by a lot and then hope the pitching can hang on.
Whoops, that Choo line should be 138 vs RHP.
Also, I forgot the catchers! Have to drop Jordy Mercer and either Eric Chavez or Austin Meadows. Really hard to find functional catchers with these characteristics who aren’t terrible. I’d probably go with some defense-first guys like Bengie Molina (114 wRC+ vs LHP) and Jason Castro (105 wRC+ vs RHP).
You already dropped him, but Mercer is vs. LHP I think? Also Bartlett.
Mercer has a pleasingly symmetrical career -49.8 Off and 49.8 Def.
Yeah that’s right. I must have flipped them.
I think I have to drop Bartlett though, although I am sure he can handle second and third base he has no track record of that. Doesn’t make sense as a backup utility guy. Mercer at least has some track record.
I also misread Chavez too, so I would have to drop him or Corey Koskie in addition to Bartlett to make room for the catchers.
This team would get absolutely hammered against left handed pitching, to the point where Molina would be one of the better hitters against them. It’s too bad Brian Dozier doesn’t fit the rules, he’s super close and would probably be a better fit for the team than Chisholm.
I immediately thought of Rance Mulliniks and Garth Iorg but they were nowhere near this extreme
Dane Iorg did have a .217 difference
He’s not going to win, and shouldn’t, but skenes is a legitimate MVP candidate this year. That’s just how good he’s been.
A brief and incomplete list of pitchers that should have won MVP:
2018 Jacob deGrom
2014 Clayton Kershaw (actual winner)
2000 Pedro Martinez
1999 Pedro Martinez
1995 Randy Johnson
1986 Mike Scott (this is one of the all time great years that people have forgotten)
1985 Dwight Gooden
1979 JR Richard
1978 Ron Guidry
1976 Vida Blue (he did win one in 1971, although Willie Stargell should have won it then. Stargell got his in 1979 at the expense of JR Richard)
Arguable Seaver in ‘71 but it’s close enough. Only time he was over 9k/9 which was not common then. Looks like vida had a career K year too. Surprised it wasnt during an expansion year.
1971 was a bananas year for pitchers. There were *five* pitchers with an fWAR over 8. And another four over 7. Some of this was because they pitched way more, but there was also just a huge gap between the best pitchers and everyone else.
This was a time of truly incredible pitchers (seriously, there were like a dozen league aces every year between 1969 and 1978), but it stands out even for the era. For reference, in 1970 there were only three starters with an fWAR over 8 and one more over 7. In 1972, there were only two with an fWAR over 8, and no other ones over 7. This would be huge news if we had a year with that many banner pitching performances, but 1971 was an outlier even for that era.
I know you’re talking pitchers, but wearing my Mets fandom on my sleeve Stargel got it at the expense of a “clean” MVP for Hernandez in 1979. Though certainly Richard looks like he had an even better year. (I’m not familiar with him).
JR Richard was a pitcher ahead of his time.
He was 6”8, threw the ball really, *really* hard, and it took him several seasons to figure out how to throw strikes. And when he did, he was unstoppable (at his peak he was even better than Nolan Ryan, a similar pitcher who was his teammate for a brief time). He was a lot like Misiorowski or maybe Glasnow in terms of how he could overpower hitters but had serious strike throwing problems. But he was way more durable and once it clicked he was throwing complete game shutouts. Just huge, huge stuff.
He was actually peaking in 1980 when he kept telling doctors he wasn’t feeling right. At the time there was a lot belittling him for not being “tough enough.” Turns out he was right, and everyone else was wrong. He had thoracic outlet syndrome, and he suffered a stroke while warming up for a game.
The rest of his life reads like a laundry list of bad things. He sued the Astros for medical malpractice (and I think they gave him what he asked for in the settlement). But he got scammed out of a huge sum of money, got divorced, went bankrupt, and lived under a bridge for a while. Things turned around for him eventually but the whole story is just awful.
Dan did a great ZiPS Time Warp article on him a few years ago. Potentially the single biggest “what if he stayed healthy” question mark in major league baseball history. Maybe Mark Prior or Eric Davis. Maybe.
Blue was in the American league in 1971. Stargell was National League.
One of the Q&A addressed which hitters were the greatest platoon hitters based on differential in hitting due to the “sidedness” of the pitcher, but were they actually platoon hitters? 30% of Jim Thome’s PA were against lefties, not platooned, for example. Duke Snider didn’t face many lefties but he averaged over 600 ABs for nine straight years–not platooned. Oscar Gamble, on the other had, only faced lefties less than 15% of the time and at 500 ABs once… he was a platoon hitter.
I found 27 non-position players who did not get an out when they pitched; all of them appeared in only one game.
I swear to God my first sincere reaction was “that must have been one hell of a game.”
Yes it sure seems to explain the disappointing years of Gunner Henderson and Elly de la Cruz. They can’t hit lefties vs a damn and if they happen to face a bunch in short period of time you don’t get much out of them. The Orioles must be cringing with the year Gunner has had at the plate. Good…yes, but a far cry from what was expected.