Worst. Hitters. Ever.

Saturday night, and I'm watching Seattle's Jeff Weaver get absolutely killed by the struggling Kansas City lineup. Weaver has allowed hits to the first five Royals players . He has been horrendous this year which has to come as a very big surprise to ... nobody? The Mariners gave this guy $8.3 million because, well, why? A good postseason? He was coming off an 8-14, 5.76 ERA season. Maybe they signed him for his leadership skills.

Anyway, thought I would a do a combo blog -- a little bit off the game while compling a list of the worst hitters in baseball history. I came up with the idea watching the Royals lineup on Friday -- that lineup had four guys hitting less than .200. Tonight's lineup only has three.

Game update: Weaver just gave up his sixth hit in the first inning. Then he followed a four-pitch walk. And his seventh hit -- this one to Tony Pena, who is actually NOT one of the guys hitting less than .200. It's 6-0 Royals. There goes Weaver. Nice performance. They show a statistic: Opponents are hitting .492 against Weaver this year. Yikes.

Truly bad hitters don't happen by accident. There has to be a reason. As Bill James says, the worst defensive shortstop in baseball history, whoever that may be, was probably a very good hitter. Otherwise he never would have gotten enough at-bats to BECOME the worst defensive shortstop in baseball history.

The same is true of historically bad hitters. I mean lots of guys can't hit. I can't hit. Nobody would give me 1,000 plate appearances in the big leagues. The bat hitters who got 1,000 at-bats in the big league must have offered SOMETHING. Maybe they were great fielders. Maybe they were good hitters in the minor leagues and everyone expected things to click. Maybe they were related to ownership. There has to be a reason.

Two qualifiers. One, we're going to start in 1920. It just seems too hard to compare players from the deadball era to current players. The shame of this is that we will have to exclude a couple of classics from the deadball era. Oh, what the heck ... we'll mention them now:

1. John Gochnauer. He played shortstop for the Cleveland Bronchos and the Cleveland Naps in 1902 and 1903 -- I love how they used to change team names every other year. I think they should do that on today's game. Starting tomorrow, Kansas City will be the Cowboys, Cleveland will be the Spiders, Boston will be the Beaneaters and the Yankees will be without Joe Torre. Oh. Wait. Anyway, Gochnauer was apparently a scrappy player, the kind of player managers love and everybody else despises. His first year in Cleveland, the Goch hit .185 in 459 at-bats. The next year, to prove it was no fluke, he hit .185 in 438 at-bats. See, that's consistency. That second year, he also made 98 errors at shortstop. Yeah. Ninety-eight errors.

More than 100 years later, Utah Congressman Rob Bishop was ripping the Endangered Species Act because, apparently, that's what Utah congressmen do. He called it "the John Gochnauer of Federal programs." Nice. I just hope that in 100 years some player is struggling and the manager calls him the Rob Bishop of baseball players.

2. Bill Bergen. He must have been one heck of a defensive catcher because for 11 seasons he was a remarkably bad hitter. He was sort of the Eddie Murray of bad hitting.

Bill Bergen
1901: .179, 1, 17.
1902: .180, 0, 36
1903: .227 (career high!), 0, 19.
1904: .182, 0, 12
1905: .190, 0, 22.
1906: .159, 0, 19
1907: .159, 0, 14
1908: .175, 0, 15
1909: .139, 1, 15
1910: .161, 0, 14
1911: .132, 0, 10.

Bergen also holds a record for most consecutive at-bats without a hit for a non-pitcher (42). But it should be noted here that he also holds the record for throwing out seven would-be base stealers in a game. He apparently had an amazing right arm. His left arm, though, must not have been worth much because the guy was the worst hitter in baseball history.

There are plenty of other bad hitters during the deadball era. We're going to focus on players post-1920. The only other qualifier: They must have 1,000 plate appearances.

Game update: They just showed a Royals commercial featuring the hot dog race that appears on the video board every game. It's gotten that bad -- already the promotional people have given up on selling the acual team and they're not trying to draw condiment fans to the ballpark. ... The Royals are leading 8-2 -- both Mariners runs are unearned and were scored after Mark Grudzielanek botched an easy grounder. I mention this because Meche's ERA is now 2.35. I'm just saying.

Fifth-worst hitter ever: Mario Mendoza.
Career: .215/.245/.262 in 1456 plate appearances.

-- He really got cheated by history. "The Mendoza Line" was, according to the most popular theory, created on April 29, 1979 when George Brett was looking at the averages in the Sunday paper. Assuming the paper had batting averages through April 28 (no sure bet), Brett was hitting .263 on that day and was in the middle of a slump. Mario Mendoza was hitting .276. And Brett apparently said: "I knew I was in trouble when I saw my name below Mendoza's line." The next year, he was quote in Sports Illustrated using the term.

Did Brett really invent the term? Don't know. There are some who say the term was invented by Tom Paciorek, who did hit .193 in 1975. They were teammates in '78, and Mendoza always blamed Paciorek even though he insists he didn't do it. Others (including Paciorek) say the term was invented by Bruce Bochte. No matter. In time the Mendoza line came to mean a .200 batting average (or mediocrity in just about any other walk of life), and this is where it's unfair. Mario Mendoza's career average was actually .215 -- a full 20 hits better above his own line. Mendoza was hurt by the term -- hurt and angry -- and that's understandable. It must be said, though, that he was a brutal hitter. In addition to hit low batting average, he didn't walk, he hit with no power (4 career homers), and had an OPS+ of 41.

4. Jerry Zimmerman
.204/.269/.239 in 1118 plate appearances

-- I've always had a special admiration for players who have lower slugging percentage than on-base percentage. It's not easy to do ... Zimmerman was a fine defensive catcher and, from what I gather from some Internet research (Wikipedia!), he was quite a wit. He apparently once said that if his son wanted to become a catcher, he would "kick him right in the butt." Nutty!

Later, he became a coach and he actually umpired a game during an umpire strike. ... He couldn't hit a lick. But a lot of catchers couldn't hit. In 1961, when Zimmerman, hit .206, he had the highest batting average among catchers on the Cincinnati Reds (Johnny Edwards hit .186, Bob Schmidt hit .129). ... He played in two World Series, and got one at-bat. That was in the ninth inning of Game 3 against Claude Osteen. He hit into a double play to end the game.

3. Rich Morales
.195/.267/.242

He could (and did) play anywhere in the infield. He played 200+ games at short, 150+ at second and 60+ at third. The numbers indicate he was below average defensive player at all three position, but that's hard to believe -- anyone who was this bad a hitter had to be able to play some serious defense. ... He did hit .243 with a couple of homers in 1971. Otherwise he would have been a legitimate contender for worst-hitter ever. In 1973, in more than 250 plate appearances, hit had a .197 slugging percentage.

Game update: The Royals are still beating Seattle 8-3. Meche went six innings and gave up those three unearned runs. His ERA is now 2.18. ... The Royals have been hit by pitches three times tonight. They have now been plunked by 20 pitches this season, by far the most in baseball. Meanwhile Royals pitchers have hit only five batters -- tied for the lowest total in baseball. I'm not in favor of head-hunting or anything like that. But I have to say that combination -- most HBP, fewest opponent HBP -- might say a little something about what these Royals are all about.

2. Bill Plummer
.188/.267/.279 in 1007 plate appearances.

-- He has two World Series rings as part of the Big Red Machine teams in the 1970s. ... He, of course, had the reputation as an excellent defensive catcher. I wish someone would discover some simple statistic that would plainly and simply show whether a guy could play defense. It would be nice to know how many of these "defensive specialists" through the years were actually frauds... It couldn't have been too easy to be Johnny Bench's backup catcher. Still, in his best year, 1976, Plummer hit .248. Bench hit .234 that season ... The next year, though, he hit .137 in more than 100 at-bats. ...

Plummer became manager of the Seattle Mariners in 1992. That team had Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Omar Vizquel, Edgar Martinez, Bret Boone, Tino Martinez, Jay Buhner, Harold Reynolds and Kevin Mitchell. So what do you have there: Two future Hall of Famers, maybe a third, a two-time batting champ, a three-time All-Star and RBI champ, two 300-homer men, a fired ESPN employee and a former MVP. The team lost 98 games. Obviously it's not fair at all to blame Plummer for that-- none of those players was in his prime that year. And the team's rotation, except for Unit, was abysmal. Still facts are facts: They did lose 98 games. And Plummer was fired.

1. Ray Oyler
.175/.258/.251 in 1445 plate appearances.

-- There are those who say he was an utterly brilliant defensive shortstop. Someone must have thought so. He only hit higher .200 once in his career, and that was .207. Other than that he hit .186, .171, .135, .165 and he finished it off with a nice .083 (Ron Blum's number!).

According to the Baseball Library, the 1969 Seattle Pilots fans decided that Oyler was the guy who needed their help most, so they created the "Ray Oyler fan club." It didn't help too much -- he hit .165 that season. He did hit seven homers though, a career high. ... One other fun aspect of Oyler; he couldn't run at all. He attempted eight steals in his career. He was caught six times. ... He played in four games during the 1968 World Series, but didn't get any at-bats.