The worst Rookie of the Year award winners

The parameters for making this list are pretty simple:
1. You won the award.
2. You were not very good afterward.
Now, if a guy was able to stay in The Bigs for nine or 10 years, such as Grieve and Walton, that's not bad. So guys like that didn't make this list.
One person we didn't list was Ken Hubbs, the 1962 National League Winner. Hubbs played two full seasons in the big leagues before he was killed in a plane crash.

You know you had a bad career when you make Alfredo Griffin look like Ernie Banks.
Castino was solid, batting .285 with five home runs and five stolen bases for the Twins.
But that doesn't seem deserving of the award. He tied with Griffin for the American League's 1979 award.
Their careers took decidedly different paths after that.
Griffin played 18 more seasons, winning a Gold Glove, playing in an All-Star game and piling up 1,688 hits.
Castino played six seasons. Interestingly, his numbers as a rookie - .285/.331/.397 - were very similar to his career numbers .278/.329./398.
But even for a weak Rookie of the Year, we expect more.

Don Schwall sprinted out of the gate. Then he hit the wall.
The Red Sox right-hander won 15 games as a rookie in 1961 and pitched to the tune of a 3.22 ERA.
He would play seven seasons, but never with the results from that first campaign.
He lost 15 games in 1962.
He bounced back for a commendable 1963 campaign - a 3.33 ERA. But then, never found a true role.
There was some relief work. Some starting assignments. But no rhythm or results to match the 1961 season.

Herb Score was the hardest guy to put on here. In 1955, he won the Rookie of the Year award with 16 wins and a league-leading 245 strikeouts.
His next year was even better. The left-hander went 20-9 in 1956 and again paced the junior circuit with 263 wins.
He looked like a regular Bob Feller.
Then something awful happened.
Score was drilled in the face by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald, another Rookie of the Year winner.
The incident, combined with a severe arm injury, are credited for Score's drop in velocity. The evidence suggests it was drastic. While his walks-per-nine-innings remained the same, his strikeouts per nine went from 10.5 down to 4.5.
He would go 19-27 the rest of his career.

Bob Grim won 20 games as a rookie in 1954 for the New York Yankees.
Then again, Carrot Top could have won 20 games for the New York Yankees in 1954.
Grim, however, proved he couldn't win 10 games for the Yankees in 1955.
Grim is the classic case of a pitcher who couldn't find a spot. Sometimes he started. Sometimes he relieved. He saved a league-leading 19 games in 1957.
But during an eight-year career, he finished with 37 saves, and 61 wins.
And, when you come into the league with 20 wins, that's nowhere near good enough.

It's true, Bobby Crosby could have a resurgence and pull himself off this list.
Then again, it's true that Dick Cheney could run for president. As a Democrat.
But we're being realistic.
Crosby slugged 22 homers and 34 doubles for Oakland in 2004.
He has not topped nine home runs since.
Injuries have also hurt Crosby, who has played in 100 games once since winning the award and has only one season of batting above .240.

When Pat Listach won the Rookie of the Year award in 1992, he looked like he was going to be the next great leadoff hitter.
Afterall, he had a .352 on-base percentage, stole 54 bases and scored 93 runs.
Somewhere between the 1992 and 1993 seasons, Listach lost his magic.
He played six more campaigns but only suited up for 90 games twice. He finished with a .251 average and 116 stolen bases.
Listach has made a name for himself recently, coaching third base for the Washington Nationals.

Here's another player who tied for the award, which Butch Metzger did with Pat Zachry in 1976.
Metzger went 11-4 with 16 saves that year.
He would play just two more seasons and win only five more games.

During the 1994 season, Bob Hamelin was a beast for the Kansas City Royals.
He slugged .599. He hit 24 bombs. He batted .282 with a .388 on-base percentage.
The burly slugger looked like he could be the next Bob Horner or maybe even a Mark McGwire-light.
Instead, he would be out of baseball before he turned 31 and hit just 41 homers during the rest of his career.
His final resume included a .235 average, .342 on-base percentage and a .420 slugging percentage.

We all know the story. Joe Charboneau comes up in 1980 and tears the cover off the ball. And barely makes it into the 1982 season. But this whole ordeal is worth recapping.
Charboneau hit 23 home runs and drove in 87 during that memorable rookie campaign. He would play just 70 games the rest of his career, batting .211 with a .371 slugging percentage.

Mark Fidrych didn't just perform on the field, he captured something in our soul - as this memorable Sports Illustrated piece reminds us.
He was an absolute flake. He talked to the ball, he made dirt castles on the back of the mound.
The Detroit Tigers' right-hander was known as The Bird, because he reminded people of Big Bird. But he was more like Disney's Goofy.
And for one year, he could pitch. Fidrych led the American League in ERA during that 1976 season and went 19-9.
But all that promise, hype and entertainment didn't last.
Fidrych would win just 10 games the rest of his career.

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