Worst Hitter Ever

In recent years a baseball statistic called WAR emerged as a single number representation of the value of a player in any given year or even across their entire career. The calculation is not easy for me to interpret, but here is a link: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/

Babe Ruth reigns supreme as the top career WAR for MLB hitters. Of course I became curious over the worst career WAR for a hitter. I was not the only one. A year and a half ago, Joe Pawlikowski posted the article I wanted to read on this topic: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-worst-hitter-in-baseball-history/

... I had never heard the name Bill Bergen, the man you see to your right. Now that I’ve found him, though, I’m confident that he is the worst hitter in baseball history.

Of course, no player hits that poorly and sticks around for that long without having a redeeming quality. Bergen was widely considered the premier defensive catcher of his time. He owns the record for most runners caught stealing in a single game, six. He also sits on many baseball historians’ lists of best defensive catchers. Still, even if we disproportionately weigh his mythical defensive abilities, it hardly compensates for his historically putrid skills with the bat.

According to Wikipedia:

Bergen had 3,228 career at-bats, during which he compiled a batting average of .170, a record low for players with more than 2,500 plate appearances. Pitchers are traditionally the weakest-hitting player in the lineup, yet three hurlers with more than 2,500 plate appearances accrued higher career batting averages than Bergen... Among position players (non-pitchers), the next lowest career batting average is Billy Sullivan with .213 (a remarkable .043 differential). Bergen's career on-base percentage was .194—he is the only player with at least 500 at-bats who tallied an OBP under .200.