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.
