Last week I shared a little analysis about Enzo Hernandez and his record-tying 12-RBI season. I explained that it wasn't quite as bad as it looked, because he also scored 58 runs, so he definitely made a contribution on offense. Today, I want to look at the least productive seasons in baseball history for lineup regulars.
A few caveats: First, I only looked at statistics from 1920 onward, because I suspect that there are more than a few atrocious seasons during the dead-ball era. Second, I excluded catchers, because their first order of business is catching the ball, and there have been many good field, no hit catchers in history. Third, I required a minimum of 350 plate appearances in a season to qualify.
Now, OPS is generally regarded as the best way to measure a hitter's value. But its arguable that a hitter's value to his team is best measured by how many run-scoring plays he directly contributed to. I calculated runs produced for each player, and then indexed that to 100 plate appearances to be able to make apples-to-apples comparisons between players.
Here are the least productive seasons in MLB history:
