Let's just make our way around the infield, alright? The other day Travis Jackson won the honor of being called the worst hitting Hall of Fame 3rd baseman. Now I'm at shortstop, which is actually the position Jackson spent most of his career at. How about that? Maybe I should go back and give the award of worst hitting Hall of Fame 3rd baseman back to Brooks Robinson?

Shortstop is one of only two positions that has a large amount of Hall of Fame inductees who were actually below average hitters (the other being 2nd baseman.)

The first player that may jump into your head is Ozzie Smith. Smith had a career 87 OPS+. His career OBP was only .337 and even worse, his career slugging percentage was an anemic .328, obviously Smith is in the Hall for his glove and not his bat.

But, believe it or not, there are actually two shortstops in the Hall of Fame with even lower OPS+ than Smith.

One of them is Rabbit Maranville who played from 1912 to 1935. His career OPS+ was only 82. His career batting average was .258 which is the lowest of any Hall of Fame shorstop. His .318 OBP is 3rd worst and his .340 SLG is 2nd worst (above only Smith's.)

The other is Luis Aparico who played from 1956 to 1973. His OPS+ was also just 82. His BA/OBP/SLG career numbers wer .262/.311/.343 --- Only once in his 18 seasons did he have an OPS+ above 100. In otherwords he was a below average hitter all but one season. The one exception was 1970 when he hit .313 with a .372 OBP and a .404 SLG for an OPS+ of 114.

So who is the worst hitting Hall of Fame shortstop? It's really a toss-up between Maranville & Aparico with Smith getting an honorable mention.

In the end I'm going to go with Rabbit Maranville. The clincher is that he he hit just 8 home runs from 1920 to 1935 (Babe Ruth hit 667 homers during the same time period.)

That also makes Maranville the worst hitting Hall of Famer overall (not counting pitchers of course.)

Labels: Hall Of Fame, Luis Aparico, Ozzie Smith, Rabbit Maranville