For those who spent the last month or so living under a rock, a brief news update: The Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Pigs flew, hell froze over, Theo Epstein wore a bear suit and an estimated 5 million people gathered in the Windy City to celebrate the championship parade. It was a perfect ending to a wildly entertaining season for the ages.
Of course, not everything came up roses. Each team — even the champs — had its fair share of speed bumps, from losing streaks to player decisions that just didn't pan out. Over the course of a 162-game season, there are plenty of high and low points along the way. Guys like Mike Trout, Kris Bryant and Corey Seager all made plenty of highlights and will likely take home some hardware for their performances. On the other side of the spectrum, though, are the players whose contributions caused more harm to their clubs than good.
PointAfter, a sports data site powered by Graphiq, looked at every roster and handed out each team's Least Valuable Player award. The determining factor in choosing each team's representative was Wins Above Replacement for the 2016 season, as calculated by Baseball-Reference. For context, a league-average starting-caliber player is typically worth about 2.0 WAR, meaning an average starter provides about two additional wins to his team compared to a bench player.
It's worth noting that while the validity of WAR as an all-encompassing measure of a player's value is widely accepted throughout baseball, WAR is not an exact science. Simply declaring Josh Donaldson's 2016 season better than Robinson Cano's because of Donaldson's 7.4 to 7.3 advantage in WAR isn't entirely accurate. WAR is not perfect, but it is directionally quite reliable and is by far the best tool available when quantifying a player's value relative to his peers.
Each team's least valuable player was worth negative WAR in 2016. There are several former All-Stars who have had the LVP dishonor bestowed upon them, including three former Most Valuable Player award winners and one former Cy Young award winner. Players are sorted from highest to lowest WAR, until we've reached the least valuable player in the league — an outfielder who cost his team nearly three wins this season.
Note: In the event of ties, the player who appeared in more games was ranked higher. Players who played for multiple teams in 2016 only had their WAR totals for one team taken into consideration.
By: Point After
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