Years ago - more than a decade, now - I started a series called the Bizarro Hall of Fame on my old blog. The premise was easy: chronicling the men who appeared on a Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, yet received zero votes. Some time ago, I moved the archives here, to this blog, and every year on Hall of Fame announcement day I look forward to adding to my ranks. So here they are: the eleven newest members of my Bizarro Hall of Fame.
Rick Ankiel – I don’t know how to begin the story of Rick Ankiel (I’ve started and deleted about six paragraphs already, and that was only after scrolling up and down his Baseball-Reference page for ten minutes). Maybe it’s best to say that he was a real life version of Robert Redford’s “The Natural,” a hotshot young pitching prospect (2nd on Baseball America’s 1999 Top 100 list and first the following year) who lost his way and disappeared in the way such prospects are apt to do, only to surprise everyone by reappearing years later as a power-hitting outfielder. I mean, that kinda sums it up, except without the part where the crazy stalker fan tries to kill him.
Ankiel was truly a budding superstar at the turn of the millennium, recording an 11-7 record, 3.50 ERA, and 194 strikeouts in 175 innings for the Cardinals en route to a second-place finish in the Rookie of the Year voting. He turned 21 years old that July, yet performed well enough to be handed the ball for Game One of the National League Division Series against Greg Maddux and the Atlanta Braves.
The first two innings were uneventful; Ankiel worked around a leadoff single and a couple walks in the first and a one-out double in the second as his offense staked him to a six-run lead. In the third, however, the wheels fell off. He walked Maddux on four pitches to lead off the inning, got Rafael Furcal (who had edged him for Rookie of the Year) to pop out, then threw five wild pitches over the course of the next five plate appearances. He walked three more batters (for a total of four in the inning and six in the game), allowed two singles, and four runs before being pulled with two outs (interestingly enough, he managed to strike out future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones in the midst of all this).
After the Cardinals advanced to the National League Championship Series against the Mets, Ankiel was again given the ball in Game Two. It went even worse. He struck out Timo Perez to begin the game, then walked three of the next four batters and threw two more wild pitches before being chased from the game by a Benny Agbayani RBI double. Four days later, down 6-0 in the seventh inning of Game Five, facing elimination, he got one more chance: walk, sacrifice bunt, strikeout (Timo Perez again)…wild pitch, wild pitch, run scores, walk, showers. He only appeared in eleven more games as a pitcher in the major leagues, six in 2001 and five in 2004.
That should’ve been it; that’s how careers end – one day you wake up and you can’t do it anymore. Usually you’re past your mid-twenties when you reach that point, but sometimes you’re not. For Ankiel, however, there was a second act, because it turned out he could hit a little bit. He slugged 21 homeruns in 85 minor league games in 2005, then 32 more in 2007. That earned him a big league audition, which he passed, hitting eleven homeruns in 47 games. The next year, 2008, was his best as a position player, with 25 homeruns and 71 RBI in 120 games.
Ankiel played for the Cardinals until joining the Royals as a free agent in 2010. He was traded to Atlanta at the trade deadline (in a deal that included Tim Collins, one of my all-time favorite players), then signed with Washington for the next two seasons. He signed with Houston for 2013 and was released in May. He ended his career with the Mets, hitting .182 in 20 games. (Also, I think this sets a record for the most I have ever written about a Bizarro inductee.)
Jason Bay – The National League Rookie of the Year with Pittsburgh in 2004, Bay had a really nice five year peak from 2005-09, averaging .279 with 31 homeruns, 103 RBI, and a 131 OPS+. Traded to the Red Sox at the 2008 deadline as part of the deal that finally got Manny Ramirez out of Boston after years or rumors that he was gone, Bay didn’t re-sign in Beantown despite a career-high 36 homeruns and 119 RBI in 2009. Instead, he caught a case of the Mets, hitting a total of 37 homeruns and driving in 144 in the final four years of his career (the last was spent in Seattle). According to Wikipedia, one of the players the Red Sox drafted using the picks received as compensation for Bay signing with the Mets was Brandon Workman, who has two rings with the team and was particularly effective out of the bullpen in the 2013 postseason.
Freddy Garcia – Of the three players dealt to Seattle by the Houston Astros for Randy Johnson at the 1998 trade deadline, two were Bizarro Hall of Famers: Carlos Guillen (Class of 2017) and Garcia (the third, John Halama, only played nine seasons and isn’t eligible to appear on the ballot). Like Guillen, Garcia had a fine career, posting a 116-71 record with a 4.01 ERA and 1,202 strikeouts before his thirtieth birthday. Unfortunately, he pitched until he was 36, and those final seven years were not great save for a small resurgence with the 2011 Yankees. Still, Garcia’s final career record of 156-108, 1,621 strikeouts, and 34.4 WAR is nothing to be ashamed of.
Two of Garcia’s finest moments came in back-to-back starts in the 2005 postseason. First he pitched a complete game in Game Four of the American League Championship Series to give the White Sox a commanding three games to one lead over the Los Angeles Angels, then started and won the deciding fourth game of the World Series, scattering just four hits over seven shutout innings.
Jon Garland – I have no evidence to back this up, but Bizarro Hall of Famers might have influenced the 2005 postseason more than any other. Freddy Garcia won Game Four in both the ALCS and the World Series; 2015 inductee Jermaine Dye was the World Series MVP; and Garland pitched Game Three in both the ALCS and the World Series, winning the former and departing after seven innings with a 5-4 lead in the latter (two of the runs were unearned; the bullpen coughed up the lead in the eighth but the White Sox eventually won in fourteen innings).
(Fun fact: that White Sox team only used six starting pitchers all season: Mark Buehrle will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2021, Garland and Garcia are Bizarro Hall of Famers, Orlando Hernandez didn’t pitch long enough to be eligible, Jose Contreras was eligible this year but didn’t make the ballot, and Brandon McCarthy will be eligible in 2024.)
A stalwart in Chicago’s rotation for his first eight seasons (he won 92 games, including 18 in both 2005 and 2006) after being drafted tenth overall by the Cubs in 1997 (he was traded to the South Side the following year), Garland became a journeyman in the final five years of his career, bouncing around to five different teams (including two separate stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers and every member of the National League West except for San Francisco).
(Another fun fact and Bizarro connection: Garland’s girlfriend, Lovieanne Jung, was a member of the United States Olympic Softball teams in 2004 and 2008. Jason Bay’s sister, Lauren Bay-Regula, played for the Canadian Olympic Softball teams in 2004 and 2008.)
Travis Hafner – Not many 31st round draft picks reach the major leagues, let alone become one of the most feared hitters in baseball over multiple seasons, but that’s what Hafner did. Drafted by Texas in 1996, he appeared in 23 games for the Rangers in 2002 before being dealt to Cleveland in the offseason. He did alright for himself in just over half a season with the Indians in 2003 (14 homeruns, 115 OPS+) before going off for the next four seasons with averages of 32 homeruns, 108 RBI, and a 156 OPS+ (and that last number is dragged down by a 120 mark in 2007). Maybe most impressive, he posted .400+ on-base percentages the first three of those years and walked at least 100 times in the last two.
Alas, it wasn’t built to last. After a dismal 2008, Hafner enjoyed four well-above average offensive seasons in Cleveland, but only once recorded more than 400 plate appearances. He finished his career with the Yankees in 2013, hitting .202 with 12 homeruns and 37 RBI.
The second-best player from North Dakota in major league history (Darin Erstad has yet to be knocked from his perch atop this mountain), Hafner had a couple cool homerun moments: on July 19, 2004, he hit two homeruns, then followed it up with three the next day for a total of five in two games; and on July 7, 2011, he hit one of 29 “ultimate” grand slams in major league history – a walk-off grand slam when trailing by three runs.
Ted Lilly – Lilly pitched for six teams in fifteen major leagues seasons. He was drafted and signed by the Dodgers, became a Top 100 prospect with the Expos, and enjoyed his best seasons with the Cubs and Blue Jays. Yet for some reason, I always think of him as a Yankee. There is no good explanation for this.
My extensive research for this post led me to Wikipedia (it was the second search result for “Ted Lilly”), where I learned that Lilly took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the White Sox on June 13, 2010. The player who ruined his attempt at immortality was fellow 2019 Bizarro inductee Juan Pierre.
Derek Lowe – Lowe had one of those careers that was just awesomely weird. He started out being traded from Seattle to Boston with Jason Varitek for Heathcliff Slocumb in one of the great lopsided trades of all-time. After tying for the team lead in saves in 1999, he became Boston’s full-time closer in 2000 and responded with 42 saves, a 2.56 ERA, and an All-Star appearance. He wasn’t as effective the next season (3.53 ERA and just 24 saves in 67 appearances for a Red Sox team that imploded down the stretch), but there was something interesting in there at the end: his final three outings of the season were all starts, and he pitched really well, allowing just two earned runs in 16 innings while striking out 15.
The next year was another high – he finished 21-8 with a 2.58 ERA and 177 ERA+, made his second All-Star team in three seasons, finished third in the Cy Young voting, and pitched a no-hitter against Tampa Bay on April 27. He was pretty good, so of course the next year was another down swing: 17 wins and a 4.47 ERA that helped underscore just how meaningless wins could be as a statistic (hasn’t stopped me from using them here though, I will freely admit). The next season, 2004, was even worse (14-12, 5.42 ERA) and it looked like he was on his way out of Boston…so of course he finished in the strongest way possible, recording the win in the deciding games of the ALDS (after coming on in relief), the ALCS (one run on one hit in six innings), and the World Series (seven innings, no runs, three hits).
He left as a free agent and pitched nine more years for five different teams, eventually becoming one of those, “wait, he’s still around?!” guys. (This may only interest me, but over the course of his career he led the league in wins (2006 with the Dodgers), losses (2011 with the Braves), and saves (2000 with the Red Sox).) And if nothing else he was a reliable back of the rotation starter, averaging a 15-11 record and 4.01 ERA from 2002-11, and durable to boot, with 33 starts and 203 innings a year in that same time frame.
Darren Oliver – The 13,999th player in major league history according to Baseball-Reference, Oliver came up as a reliever, spent eight years as a starter, and then worked out of the bullpen for most of his final eight and a half seasons. Somehow, in 2011, he and fellow Bizarro Hall of Famer/Ageless Wonder Arthur Rhodes spent time in the same bullpen with the Texas Rangers (I’m not sure why a team would need to employ two old LOOGYs, but who am I to argue with results?). Oliver had the better record but Rhodes won in the end, joining the Cardinals after his July release and beating his former team in the World Series. They did not appear in the same game at any point in that Series: Rhodes pitched in Games 1, 2, and 7 for St. Louis, while Oliver appeared in Games 3, 5, and 6 for the Rangers.
Juan Pierre – I’ve been in a 30-team fantasy baseball keeper league for over ten years now. For much, if not all, of that time, one of our teams has been named, “I Still Hate Juan Pierre More Than You Do.” I’ve never understood it, and I’ve never asked, but now I’m starting to think that Ted Lilly is in my fantasy baseball league.
If I’m being serious, though, Pierre was a pretty solid player with a game founded on speed (three seasons with 10+ triples and 614 career stolen bases) and durability (five straight seasons with 162 games played, a streak of 821 straight that Wikipedia tells me gets recorded as two separate streaks because he was once used as a pinch-runner in the middle). He was hard to strike out (479 in 14 seasons) and didn’t walk much (464 times) but amassed over 2,200 career hits (including four seasons with 200+). He led the league in a number of categories, resulting in a Black Ink score of 21, not too far off the average Hall of Famer score of 27.
Vernon Wells – A three-time Gold Glove winner who could hit for power (three 30-homerun seasons and five 20-homerun seasons in a fifteen-year career), Wells was followed by the seven year, $126 million contract he signed after the 2006 seasons. Like Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury, and many others after him, Wells struggled to live up to the deal, though he did produce reasonably good seasons in 2008 and 2010 before being traded to the Angels. The problem is, when money like that is involved, “reasonably good” often isn’t enough. It’s funny, though: while I remember it as being terrible at the time, it doesn’t seem as awful in retrospect.
Kevin Youkilis – A part of Boston’s World Series championship teams in 2004 and 2007, Youkilis hit .500 in the 2007 ALCS against Cleveland, hitting safely in all seven games and recording multiple hits five times. He won a Gold Glove at first base after breaking into the majors as a third baseman. The following two seasons he finished third and sixth in the MVP voting, respectively, and made the first two of his three career All-Star teams.
Youkilis is Jewish, and I did not realize that in 2004 (at least) he did not play on Yom Kippur. He is married to Patriot quarterback Tom Brady’s sister.
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