12 Players Who Flamed Out Spectacularly

Last Updated: August 26th, 2026 by Michael Schatz

In sports, many people like to talk about the most famous draft busts in history. It is a topic where teams and players can be shamed equally for decision-making or performance. In baseball, it's a little different because you're looking for needles in a haystack most of the time.

This is a sport where drafts used to go as long as teams wanted them to. Sometimes it would go past the 50th round. So there's a good chance that you may not have heard of any of these 12 players we have on this list.

That would be because their flame couldn't really get lit, even when there was so much promise when they were drafted.

12. Tom Veryzer – The Tigers’ Failed First Round Pick

Tom Veryzer was the 11th overall pick in 1971 and got called up to the MLB after just two years. The team that drafted him, the Detroit Tigers, was looking for a franchise player to fill their shortstop position.

Ed Brinkman was an All-Star and Gold Glove shortstop who got dealt in 1975, which would be his final season, to make way for Veryzer to take the starting job. Veryzer could not get it done, eventually hitting a paltry .197 in 1977 before being replaced by a 20-year-old named Alan Trammell.

11. Ed Romero – The Utility Player Who Couldn’t

Ed Romero had a lot of hype coming from Puerto Rico as he debuted for the Milwaukee Brewers at the age of just 19. He carved out 12 years of Major League service, but never got to the point where he was an everyday starter.

His value came from his ability to play multiple positions and give starters a day off. Statistically, he underwhelmed, accruing a -5.2 career WAR.

10. Andres Thomas – Atlanta’s Shortstop Nightmare

Shortstop can be a tough spot to play, as fans will be quick to cast judgment on whoever fills the starring role. The Braves were ready to build a strong team that would carry them through the 1990s. They had Andres Thomas start at shortstop in 1988 and 1989 to back up their young arms on the mound, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.

Thomas would go on to commit a league-leading 29 errors in 1988 and repeat that amount the following year in fewer games. Safe to say, he did not make it to the '90s, as Bobby Cox wisely went with other options.

9. Gary Sutherland – The Defensive Liability

Gary Sutherland was a promising 21-year-old middle infielder when he debuted in 1966 for the Phillies. They gave him a look in 173 games across three years, but he only mustered one home run while having negative defensive metrics.

Then Montreal gave him a try. He hit .234 with -1.8 WAR over three seasons. Houston came calling, then Detroit, Milwaukee, San Diego, and St. Louis. All of them thought they could turn him into a reliable everyday starter. It never panned out.

8. Tommy Thevenow – The Powerless Wonder

Here's a player who did become a reliable everyday starter for a couple of seasons in his career. At least that's how a couple of teams tried to use him. Tommy Thevenow actually produced a top-four MVP finish in 1926 for St. Louis.

That was easily his best season, where he accumulated 2.9 WAR. It was downhill from there. The Phillies gave a shot to be their everyday shortstop in 1930 and he committed an MLB-worst 56 errors. Thevenow still played for 15 MLB seasons, hitting just two home runs in 1,229 games.

7. Juan Castro – The Enduring Underachiever

Shortstop is a tough position to play, and having a .977 career fielding percentage is proof enough for teams to give you a shot at the Major League level for 17 years. Juan Castro was a reliable backup for five different teams. The defense was good, but the offense was more than underwhelming.

He hit .207 across eight seasons with the Dodgers, which was good for an astonishingly low 44 OPS+. Then he went to Cincinnati for eight seasons and hit .237 with a 61 OPS+. The defense was there, but the offense made you scratch your head.

6. Tuck Stainback – The Outfield Outlier

I understand that you could be reading this and thinking that some of these players on this list were career backups, and there's nothing wrong with having lower numbers when you're given fewer chances.

I understand that sentiment, but there are so many players who have worked hard for their shot at the Major League level that it's probably tough for them to see players like Tuck Stainback hold a spot for 13 seasons and hit .259 with a -6.0 career WAR.

Tuck Stainback — Career	Total
G	817
AB	2261
H	585
HR	17
RBI	204
SB	27
AVG	.259
OBP	.284
SLG	.333
OPS	.617
World Series titles	1

5. Dan Meyer – The Hit-First Position Failure

The positions of left field and first base are usually reserved for the power hitters who can anchor a lineup. Sometimes they are occupied by defense-first athletes. Dan Meyer struggled in both aspects. His career fielding percentage was pretty good at .983, but advanced metrics show that he had a negative output in saving runs defensively. With the bat, he wasn't much better.

There were flashes in 1977 and 1979 in Seattle where he hit at least 20 home runs in both of those seasons. Other than that, there were seasons where he only hit eight home runs while batting under .240. All of that combined for a career WAR of -6.4.

4. Doug Flynn – The Utility Disaster

Doug Flynn had a career that started out really well. He didn't start every day in Cincinnati, but he was on those Reds teams that won back-to-back World Series championships. He was a utility player who had a serviceable bat to the tune of over 80 OPS+.

If that was the rest of his career, that would be okay. However, he never hit over 70 OPS+ for the rest of his 11-year career. There were years like 1982 when he hit .225 with zero home runs and 12 doubles while being an everyday middle infielder. His OPS+ that season finished at an astonishingly low 41.

3. Bill Bergen – Baseball’s Worst Hitter Ever

For those who talk about how batting average used to be the gold standard in weighing how good a player was, I would like to point to Bill Bergen and ask how he was able to stay in the league for 11 years. Bergen's batting average was at .227 in 1903. That wasn't very good. However, for Bergen, that was his best season.

His 10 other years as a backup catcher never hit over .190. His OPS+ finished at 21 for his career. For a player who played that long, I don't think I have ever seen a career OPS+ that low. In fact, his 1909 season, where he played the most games of his career at 112, saw his OPS+ finish at a mind-boggling one. Just one.

2. Mario Mendoza – The Man Behind Baseball’s Most Famous Batting Line

Mario Mendoza is the unfortunate standard-bearer in hitting attrition. The famous Mendoza Line is still used to this day, as there are probably more good hitters who will see their batting averages drop to close to .200 than there used to be. Mario Mendoza never really hit exactly .200 in a season, but he always toed that line.

His career batting average actually is .215, but the one season where he was given an everyday role at shortstop for the Seattle Mariners in 1979, he finished with a .198 batting average. That single season is a perfect summation of the hitter that Mendoza was. There's no doubt that his fielding was solid enough, but the hitting ended up being as infamous as any player in history.

Mario Mendoza — Career	Total
G	686
AB	1337
H	287
HR	4
RBI	101
SB	12
AVG	.215
OBP	.245
SLG	.262
OPS	.507

1. Al Chambers – The First Overall Pick Who Never Was

We finish this list as we started by highlighting a high draft pick that never really panned out. For Al Chambers, just making it to the major leagues already puts him above some of the other first overall picks in history. However, you could say that his performance on the biggest stage gives more of a look at how bad that Mariners pick was to get him in 1979.

He debuted in 1983 and played 31 games, hitting .209 with one home run. Then he saw the number of chances drop in the following season, where he played just 22 games with a .224 batting average and still one home run. That was about it, as he played just four games in 1985 and never took an MLB field again after that.

I know the first overall pick isn't as guaranteed to be a success in this sport as the others, but it is still fascinating to see when the top player of a draft fails to live up to the lofty expectations that so many scouts put on him.

Keep reading

• 10 First-Overall Picks That Became Draft Disasters
• 10 Ceremonial First Pitches That Never Should Have Happened
• 20 Tom Glavine Games That Show Why Batters Feared Him