True busts

A Golden State blogger sparked something for me this morning with his post as to whether or not Billy Owens, a first round pick that ended the Run TMC era, was a true draft day bust. Owens wound up being a journeyman despite some occasionally useful offensive numbers, and was out of the Association by age 31.

Being a disappointment despite outsized talent wasn't a new trick for Owens, who was also a monstrously hyped product at my alma mater of Syracuse University. But we're talking about a guy that posted career numbers of 11.7 / 6.7 / 2.8, and was useful enough to get traded five times. That might not be what you think of when you go for the third pick in the draft and someone you give up Mitch Richmond for even up, but it's not exactly Frederic Weis.

The nature of a draft bust, and indeed, the nature of a terrible player, is skewed. If you are truly awful, you never make the top levels, and you most certainly do not last for ten years. The worst baseball player of my memory, growing up, was Steve Jeltz of the Phillies. He was the living embodiment of the mid-80s teams that did nothing and went nowhere; he hit .210 in an 8-year career with a .576 OPS, and lo, the fielding wasn't much better. But Jeltz was better than any number of other players, which is to say just about every other guy who was employed to play shortstop for the Phillies for a half dozen years. That makes him, by definition, a pretty great player, and if you had, say, faced him in high school or college, he was probably the best player on the field.

Truly bad players have to be good enough to hang around for a while. They also need to fail for a team that you remember, which generally means they need to play for a team with some prominence. Perhaps with a moment of epic fail in a playoff game or two.

Failing that, it also helps if they are personally irritating, or some kind of felon. That helps.