Players who fell off a cliff
 

Has anyone had a worse dropoff than Norm Cash from .361 in 1961 to .243 the following year?

cliff
 

What about that Tito Francona in early 60s... ? very high .300's...then low next year ?

As a Marlins fan, Chris Coghlan came to mind. ROY in 2009 with a .321 average and 162 hits in 128 games.

Then he dropped off a cliff. Never the same hitter.

Jason Bay comes to mind: Redsox to Mets free agent

2009 36 Hrs 119 Rbi

2010 6 Hrs 47 Rbi

Fall
 

Sadly, Ed Delehanty........wait, that was a bridge.

Bob "Hurricane" Hazle. .403 in 1957. .211 in 1958.

If memory serves, Steve Stone followed his Cy Young 25-7 season with a 4-7 season. Doing this without looking it up.

Bryce Harper. 10.0 WAR in 2015. 1.5 WAR in 2016.

Mark Fydrich had a great rookie year, then nothing.

Zoilo Versalles. MVP at 25 to .249 to .200 to .196 to .236 and out of the league at 29.

Sidd Finch had a lot of hype in spring training, never delivered.

Dave Ferriss won 50 games in his first two seasons, then had arm troubles and was never the same.

Gary Sanchez--.278 in 2017 to .186 in 2018, with less power. On the other hand, he did increase his number of passed balls.

No Roids? : )

Super Joe Charboneau!

Curious, Are We Talkin' jus Hitting?

or can someone like General Custer Count?

Nice.

Chris Davis by far. Went from an MVP candidate to the worst season by a batter in history. His defense has also fallen off

Brady Anderson 50 hr's in 1996, 18 in 1997.

Shoeless Joe Jackson...
1920 Batted .382 120 RBIs, 105 Runs, 20 triples...
1921 nothing!

Joshua

Brady Anderson comes to mind. I mean, he was a respectable player before and after 1996. But his 1996 stats of .297/.396/.637 with 50 home runs are so crazily better than anything else he ever did in any season it's a true oddity.

Luis Gonzalez 2001 is similar. 57 homers and a .688 slg.? Just.... how? To go from a doubles slap hitter with the Astros to THAT with the Diamondbacks.

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Well, it would be odd if not for steroids....

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Nice one!

Norm Cash used a corked bat for the whole year, guess in 1962, the cork came out

Better that than the table leg he took to the plate as the final out in a Nolan Ryan no-hitter, saying it would be as good as anything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEboSkPUgUo

Nick Esasky had 30 HR (5th in AL) and 108 RBI (3rd in AL) in 1989 with Boston. Ended up getting struck with vertigo, played in 9 games in 1990 and his career was over.

Grady Sizemore was a 30-30 player at age 25. Couldn't stay on the field after.

Well, Roy Campanella never dropped off of a cliff, but the last six or so years of his career were more like a rollercoaster with 100 point jumps/dips in batting averages. Mickey Vernon...the guy would hit .260, win a batting title, then hit .260 again. And these were people who could really play.

Chuck Klein, like Campy a HOFer, went from being this astounding hitter for six years to being a, what?... nice hitter (this isn't a complement) with no power after he left the Phillies. Of course, leaving Baker Bowl didn't help much.

Norm Cash? He put up those good numbers the first year of expansion in the AL. Tiger Stadium was built for left-handed power hitters (jeez, Lou Whitaker could hit homers in Detroit). I always figured the ball club wanted Cash to sacrifice average for power.

lumberjack

Steve Blass Disease

I know that we're talking baseball here........

But NFL player Junior Seau immediately comes to mind.

How about Denny McLain:

31-6
24-9

AL Cy Young both years, also MVP in 1968.

Then...

3-5
10-22

and then another year or so of playing then out of baseball at 28 yrs old....and a criminal...

I don't understand this comment at all. Seau had a long productive career.

Way too many Tigers on this list! But, sadly, I'd add Dave Rozema. Rookie pitcher of the year in '78, went 15-7 with 3.09 ERA, pitched 218 innings with 16 complete games and 5.7 WAR, 8th in Cy Young voting. Then, boom! Played through '86 but never came close to his rookie year.

Little before my time, but Tommy Bond. Best player in baseball in the late 1870s. Worse than replacement level in the early 1880s (had trouble getting his pitches to the plate from 50' away). Retired at age 28.

A couple of years before he committed suicide, Seau once drove his car off a cliff. In retrospect, it was probably an attempted suicide.

Roberto Alomar is still a HOFer but man did he fall off a cliff as soon as he left Cleveland. Hit 336, finished 4th in MVP voting and was out of the game three years later.

Too soon?

How about Rick Ankiel? 2nd in ROY to not being to throw the ball over the plate.

Another "rule change" victim: Ross Barnes:

1876 (fair/foul rule last year) -- .404 (lead NL)

1877 (fair/foul rule abolished) -- .272

Tony Horton comes to mind as well.

Haha! That's awesome! Will never forget that one...

As a kid, I remember Dale Murphy went from THE BEST to he can’t make contact with the ball seemingly overnight. I was confused. From 87-88 there was a huge drop off and never GREAT again.

Also Donny Baseball... but prob can’t include him due to back Injuries being the reason.

Ps: to PS- not sure why i quoted you... thought i was just responding tinthread on phone. Ooops

Can’t forget The Bird. 19-9 record as a rookie. 29-19 career.

In Barnes defense, he also had the ague in 1877 and was never physically the same in his remaining career.

Yes, Gary, when you get the ague it really takes the Pl out of you. :)

David

George Foster was somewhat similar to Anderson, and no talk of steroids.

I don't think that's valid. George was a power hitter who had one especially amazing year. Anderson was a doubles hitter who hit 50 and only had two other seasons over 20 (and barely at that, 21 and 24) His 50 was bookended by 16 and 18. George had seasons of 52, 40, 34, 29 and 6 other seasons over 20. and hit about 140 more for his career in nearly identical plate appearances. Some anomalies are a little more anomalous than others!

You've got other guys who hit 40 and never hit 20 like Dave Johnson and Rico Petrocelli. You even have Yaz who had 3 seasons over 40 and NONE in the 30's which is just weird. Strange things happen but it's pretty commonly accepted that Brady and Luis Gonzalez (despite his protestations) juiced.

More of a downhill slope than a cliff.

What about Buzz Arlett? Hit over .300 and slugged away. Never played in the majors again. Of course he was hung over most of the time and really wasn't very interested in playing in the field.

The wags had a poem for him:

Buzz Arlett weighs half a ton,

He cannot field, he cannot run!

But when he swings his trusty wood,

The pellet leaves the neighborhood.

He was out in the field after a night of celebrating and Walter Boom Boom Beck was having a rough day on the mound. Hit after hit shot into the outfield with Arlett misplaying many of them. Finally Beck could take it no longer. He fired a ball that hit the right field boards and caromed back to Arlett, who surprisingly fielded the ball cleanly and fired a strike into second.