Usually when you think of the least valuable player in all of Major League Baseball, you think of guys like Eric Bruntlett circa 2009 or even this year’s Greg Dobbs. But guys like Dobbs and Bruntlett don’t get nearly enough at-bats and playing time to seriously impact a team’s season by being awful. You have to adjust your thinking to players that are really bad AND get too much playing time. Off the top of my head when I thought about this subject, the first guys to come to my head were Ivan Rodriguez (.267 BA 3 HR’s 13 BB’s and a .290 OBP), Casey Kotchman (.220 BA 9 HR’s 35 BB’s and .283 OBP), or Geral Laird (.202 BA 5 HR’s 18 BB’s and a .262 OBP). These guys are not even close to the actual LVP according to the saber metric stat WAR (Wins Above Replacement Player).
Without further ado 2010’s Least Valuable Player is……Pedro Feliz.

Pete Happy was actually acquired by the St. Louis Cardinals from the Houston Astros to anchor third base for the remainder of the season because of the injury to David Freese. Why they would look to Pedro Feliz for help? I can’t really answer that. I would like to mention that this is one deal where Ed Wade was not absolutely raped, though. To really put Feliz’ season into perspective I will throw some numbers at you.

.218 Batting Average, .230 OBP (unheard of), .299 slugging %, and an insanely low 12 walks. There are seven starting pitchers in the Majors with a higher slugging percentage than Feliz, and 19 pitchers with a higher OBP. Feliz has walked in a whopping 3% of his plate appearances and his OPS+ is 46 ( league average is 100). That means Pedro has produced less than half of what the average major league player would throughout the course of a season. To top all of this off, by just penciling Feliz’ name into the lineup everyday, the Astros and Cardinals have LOST 2 games on the season according to Fangraphs.com.

With all that said, I’d like to congratulate….or console Pedro Feliz for his accomplishment.

What would your guess be for LVP?

Tags: Fangraphs, Johnny G, Pedro Feliz, WAR