St. Louis Cardinals: 30 worst players in team history

Aug 8, 2014; Baltimore, MD, USA; St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Daniel Descalso (33) can

Every year we hear about the St. Louis Cardinals’ storied history, but what about the players we don’t hear about?

Look, I am as big of a St. Louis Cardinals‘ fan as anyone, but even I know that this team has had some really bad players. We’ve talked about the best hitters, the best pitchers, best roster, the best free agents, but today we are taking a different look at things. We are going to cover the bad side of things today. This is a combo piece between myself and Dan Buffa, with Dan covering some of the more recent players.

This isn’t an easy thing to do, there have been so many great players in this team’s history that we just kind of forget about those pieces that don’t work. In baseball, you can’t really stick with a bad player for that long, so that makes it a little harder when trying to find the worst of the worst. Mainly, we are looking at backup players that never panned out, pitchers who just didn’t have it, and free agent grabs that flopped.

This will be done in fun, based on statistics, and not in any way malicious. This is simply a fun and lighthearted exercise a few fans came together to do. So, please if we mention the guy who signed your shoe at winter warmup or the guy who flipped you the ball when you were sitting behind the dugout and instantly became your favorite player, do not hurl insults at us or tell us that we don’t know what we are talking about, we are just having a bit of fun.

For the most part these players will be ranked by Fangraphs’ Wins Above Replacement statistic (fWAR) and most have at least 200 innings pitched or 500 plate appearances.

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