Today's top 10 is none other than the worst athlete acquisitions in Seattle sports history, be it college recruiting, pro drafts, or free agents. The criteria in ranking these was how significant of a talent evaluation blunder occurred, whether it be a high school prospect or an aging superstar being signed for too much money.Feel free to add your thoughts / additional athletes. Here are mine:
10. Adrian Oliver, UW basketball: This kid always drove me nuts when he was with the Dawgs. He came out of Modesto Christian (CA) High School highly touted, the #8 PG in the nation according to Scout.com in fact, having offers from the likes of Kentucky, Gonzaga, and Cal. But his slow, methodical play and sometimes timid demeanor was no match for Lorenzo Romar's style, and was eventually relegated to the bench in favor of UW's quicker, scrappier guards, something Oliver took issue with and finally transferred to San Jose State after his sophomore year. He never came into his own at UW before he decided to opt for the big-fish-small-pond appeal of SJSU and the Western Athletic Conference.
9. Kenji Johjima, Mariners: .271 / 40 HR / 181 RBIs should earn you the reward of a three-year contract extension worth $24 million. Unfortunately for the Mariners, those are Johjima's career stats through three seasons, one month -- not a single-season total. What's worse, those statistics are heavily weighed from his first two years in the big leagues. Since then, he's hit .227 in a disasterous 2008 campaign and is off to another slow start this year, with Ms pitchers continuing to question his game-calling ability.
8. J.R. Hasty, UW football: Hasty, one of the highest-touted running backs to come to U Dub out of Bellevue High, where he scored an impressive 50 touchdowns his senior year, was the gem of Tyrone Willingham's first recruiting class in 2005. Most thought he would be the next great tailback at UW. But six carries for 18 yards, academic ineligibility, and suspensions from the team for blowing off workouts summed up his pathetic career as a Husky.
7. Jeff Cirillo, Mariners: The epitome of why teams should never hedge their bets on a "hitter" from Colorado (also see "Matt Holliday and his .223 average for the Oakland A's"). The Mariners traded eventual all-star closer Brian Fuentes and two others for Cirillo prior to the 2002 season. The largely ineffective third baseman was paid just over $13 million and posted batting averages of .249 and .205 in the two years he was with the team.
6. Dan McGwire, Seahawks: It's unfortunate this McGwire evidently wasn't on the roids. McGwire was the first of two major high-draft blunders by the Seahawks (keep reading for the second), being selected 16th overall in the 1991 NFL draft. He was a backup to Dave Krieg in his rookie season and was expected to be the quarterback of the future, but after a terrible preseason the next year, "Mark's Brother" was named third string quarterback behind the immortals Stan Gelbaugh and Kelly Stouffer. In 1993, the Seahawks drafted Rick Mirer (here's some foreshadowing for you) and gave up on McGwire. After spending one season in Miami, his NFL career was over.
5. Richie Sexson, Mariners: Four years, $50 million. The marriage started out promising, Big Sexy hitting 39 HRs and 121 RBIs in his first year with the Ms (2005.) But then it all went downhill, culminating with his .205 season in 2007 and eventual release from the team in 2008. Ultimately, it was either a home run or an out for Sexson, the latter far outweighing any power numbers he was brought to Seattle to produce.
4. Olden Polynice, Sonics: At first you think, Polynice, really? What was so bad about him? But consider the Sonics traded their first round selection (5th overall), a guy by the name of Scottie Pippen, to the Bulls for Polynice, the #8 pick in the 1987 NBA draft. I'd go on with statistics to support why this was a bust, but do I really have to? OP had a decent career (7.8 points, 6.7 boards), but in contrast to who the Sonics originially drafted, there's no contest. Next to Bowie/Jordan, this was the ultimate "oops" by an NBA team's front office.
3. Ryan Anderson, Mariners: Dubbed the "Little Unit", the 6'10 lefty was the Mariners' top draft choice in 1997 and rated the team's top prospect from 1998-2002 in the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. Three times, Baseball American named Anderson the top pitching prospect in all of baseball. At every season's end, unhappy Ms fans would find optimism thinking "just wait, we'll have the Little Unit in our rotation next year." A $2.175 million signing bonus and multiple shoulder surgeries later, Anderson was let go by the Mariners in 2005, never seeing Safeco Field.
2. Jim McIlvaine, Sonics: Nearly the greatest bonehead acquisition in Seattle sports history, McIlvaine was sought out to be the heir apparent to Sam "Big Smooth" Perkins. Sonics' brass figured the 7'1 center would provide the missing piece for the team coming off an NBA finals loss to the Bulls, and signed him to an a seven-year, $33.6 million free-agent contract in 1996 after posting 2.3 points, 2.9 rebounds and two blocks per game for the Washington Bullets the season prior. Seattle fans were outraged, in addition to superstar forward Shawn Kemp, who had been asking for a contract increase after leading the team to a franchise-record 64 wins and its best postseason performance in 17 years. The decision by Seattle's front office to deny Kemp a salary increase and to award the unproven center with such a large-scale offer is widely thought to have hurt the team's chemistry and spelled the beginning of the end for the strong Sonics teams of the mid-90s. McIlvaine's first season in Seattle ended up being his best, registering career highs in points per game (3.8), rebounds per game (4.0), and blocks (2.0). I'd give McIlvaine's acquisition the number one spot, except everyone knew he wasn't good to begin with and the Sonics still paid him an obscene amount of money.
1. Rick Mirer, Seahawks: The #2 pick overall by the Hawks in the 1993 NFL draft never lived up to his Montana-esque Notre Dame hype. Mirer's four seasons in Seattle gave fans 41 TDs to 56 INTs and a QB rating in the 60s. Not exactly franchise-quarterback numbers. The magnitude of being the #2 overall pick and a quarterback at that, paired with the fact Mirer never lived up to his high expectations at any point in his career, gives his time in Seattle as the worst acquisition and largest evaluation of talent error in the city's sports history.
Carlos Silva #1 bust.
ReplyDeleteNate Odom (Seahawks) - mega contract. Got hurt and never played.
Sexton was not a total bust; he was good for at least 1/2 the contract. No way is he in the top 10. Put Scott Spezio in there instead.
Calvin Booth - top 10 bust. Kendall Gill sucked too.
UW - Paul Arnold makes my top 20. Never lived up to his potential.
UW Hoops - Artem Wallace. **** player every college wanted but ended his career hurt and scrapping for the last 120 seconds of every game.
Phil Nelson - what a dork. Couldn't nut up and compete for PT at the 'Dub.
No Boz! We gave up a lot to get him in the supplemental draft. Huge potential. No production. Plus the Bo Jackson humiliation. Boz should be number 1.
ReplyDeleteHow can you not include Sexson on this list! The man was the highest-paid Mariner at the time - yes, more than Ichiro! - and was # 1 and 2 in the league in strikeouts in 2005/06. And he was eventually released! Not traded...RELEASED, as in "we don't want this sorry sack of shit and will eat his salary."
ReplyDeleteSex Pot definitely makes the list. But Adrian Oliver? No way, not even top 40. If you're looking at Huskies. Wolfinger's a bigger bust than Nelson or Oliver or Wallace (who know one expected to be good anyway). At least Oliver and Nelson realized they weren't Pac-10 talent, and got out early enough to get more run at inferior conferences. Wolf man just hung around, not getting better (n fact getting worse) and not doing anything about. Till this spring.
ReplyDeleteThen, of course, there is Doug Wrenn, who should be top 2 (behind Carlos Silva). He's from Seattle, tried to leave for a more high profile school because he thought he was the sheet and then crawled back to Seattle only to not live to up to half his potential. And now he's going to jail for selling cocaine or robbing somebody or something.
Agreed on Odom too, he's gotta be up there..
Joe Wolfinger was a 1-star recruit with no other offers from Pac-10 schools.
ReplyDeleteDoug Wrenn won the Pac-10 newcomer-of-the-year award and was selected first-team All-Pac-10 after averaging 19.5 points in his first year of eligibility at UW. His next year was Romar's first, they clearly didn't get along and he left school after the season, but I'd hardly say he was a bust - he definitely lived up to his hype while at UW but his overall story is certainly tragic.
The thought behind Adrian Oliver, as written, was he was top 10 in the nation at his position out of high school and was clearly overrated.
You can definitely make an argument for The Boz, although I tried to stay away from injuries being the cause of why the player was a bust. Same goes with Steve Emtman. I wanted this to be more of a general underperformance analysis versus injury-induced.
ReplyDeleteEven with Ryan Anderson whose injuries were well-documented, he never had what it took to get to the show when he was healthy, which considering how highly touted he was, is why I felt he ranked so high on this list.