Have you ever wondered who were the most overpaid and underperforming players in UL history? If so, you have come to the right place, as the Deadweight Digest turns its focus to the biggest underachievers of all time!

We sorted all players by lifetime salaries and took the 60 highest paid batters and 40 highest paid pitchers in UL history, then looked at their career WARs. To normalize across the 100 players, we looked at dollars spent per WAR. The higher the dollars-to-WAR ratio, the more expensive a player is per unit of output, aka deadweight. For context, the average dollars-to-WAR ratio for all 100 players in the study was $1.32 million, and the bottom three players (aka biggest bang for the buck) were Johnny Antonelli, Lew Burdette, and Gene Conley (where have we seen those names before?).

As usual, we split the field into three “weight” classes: Deadfeatherweight, Deadwelterweight, and Deadheavyweight. So without any further ado, let’s get started!

Deadfeatherweights

Roy Campanella ($1.80 million per WAR)
One of two Hall of Famers to appear on this list, and you might ask yourself, well, how did he get here? The short answer is that Campy was the 21st highest paid player in UL history, but his WAR totals fall well below that high position. Campanella earned just under $91 million in his 14-year career, peaking at $11.25M per year in 1957-59 with Los Angeles, the third highest salary in the league all three years. Meanwhile, his bWAR numbers those years were 4.9, 3.2, and 3.0, good for 54th, 77th, and 58th.

Robin Roberts ($1.81M per WAR)
Roberts was the #3 pick in the UL’s Inaugural Draft, just after Campanella. Despite 19- and 20-win seasons in his first two years with the Detroit Sound, he never reached his potential and finished his career 137-158 with a 4.23 ERA, and the first of many underachieving Detroit starting pitchers.

Goose Gossage ($1.83M per WAR)
One half of the underachieving equation is being overpaid, and that was the case with Mr. Gossage. A converted reliever, Gossage had one of the best pitching seasons in UL history in 1983, going 15-3 with a 1.95 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, and 11.6 Ks per nine. That performance help earn him $38 million over the next seven years, but he never came close to pitching that well again and averaged just 1.7 WAR over that span.

Larry Doby ($1.84M per WAR)
Another guy from the Inaugural Draft, Doby was the fourth centerfielder drafted, after Mays, Mantle, and Ashburn (see below). He was a star in his first four seasons with the New York Gothams, averaging 5.9 WAR, but his salary and his production diverged wildly in his 30s. From 1956-60 he averaged $9.4 million and 3.5 WAR per year with just one 20-homer season.

Richie Ashburn ($1.87M per WAR)
The first of three Louisville Colonels on our list—not a surprise given that the early Colonels were one of the league’s weaker clubs in its early years—Ashburn had some success with the Brooklyn Superbas from 1953-58, including World Series rings in 1955 and 1957. But he also made $9+ million five years in a row, one of the very few players to rake in that kind of cash, while his WAR averaged a (relatively) modest 5.0 during that span. In 1962, he returned to Louisville at age 35 for $7.2 million and hit .247 with a .303 OBP.

Deadwelterweights (1000-2500k)

Felix Mantilla ($1.90M per WAR)
The second Hall of Famer on our list, Mantilla was elected to Beachville in 1982 on his eighth ballot. Mantilla made just $12.4 million in his first 11 years, during which he averaged 2.0 WAR, making him one of the best bargains in baseball. It turns out, however, that being one of the best bargains in baseball is one of the surest paths to a fat paycheck. In 1968 Felix signed a multi-year deal with Los Angeles that remains one of the biggest paydays in UL history. From 1968-73, Mantilla averaged $11.2 million per year while producing just 2.9 WAR per year. In his final year with Chicago, he earned $10.1 million to bat .213 with a .646 OPS and 0.2 WAR. Amazingly, the Colts won the World Series that year, more despite Mantilla than because of him.

Jon Matlack ($1.95M per WAR)
Matlack was a five-time All-Star and All-UL starter in 1973, so what’s the problem? The problem is his career took a similar trajectory as Mantilla: when he earned peanuts, he was a superstar; when he was paid handsomely, he was merely pedestrian. The #2 overall pick in 1971, Matlack put up 35 WAR in his first six seasons with the Maroons, at a price tag of just $15.6 million. The last 11 years of his career, he earned $86 million to produce just 24 WAR (or annual rates of $8.6M and 2.1, respectively), which partially explains why he bounced around to six teams.

Rance Mulliniks ($1.95M per WAR)
Rance (or how Scooby-Doo pronounces "Lance") earned $71.7 million over his 19-year UL career, $31 million of it between 1987 and 1991 when he earned $6.3 million per year on a fat contract with Charlie Qualls’ Cleveland club after some great seasons in the early 80s. Unfortunately for Quallsie Bear, and the Barons, Mulliniks accrued a grand total of 3.9 WAR over those five years, netting him a stratospheric $8 million per WAR pay rate. Rance did have a 4.0 WAR year at age 36 in 1993, at the bargain basement price of under $1 million. Oh, and by the way, Mulliniks is still playing, currently batting .284 with a .915 OPS for the Triple-A Vancouver Orcas.

Deadheavyweights (2500+)

Juan Pizarro ($3.25M per WAR)
There have been some horrible draft classes when it comes to pitchers. So much so that the topic probably merits its own article, so I will spare the details for then. However, the 1957 draft class merits special mention because it was the first rookie draft with seven pitchers taken in the first round, and one of the first bona fide bustapaloozas, to use a Glen Reed technical term. Of course, Sandy Koufax alone brings down the whole group, with his career WAR of 10.7. But Juan Pizarro wound up being the highest paid of the seven, raking in a cool $55 million over 18 seasons, yet producing less than 1.0 WAR per year. Pizarro had 11.2 WAR with the 1960-63 San Francisco Spiders, earning an All-Star nomination in ‘63, but the Puerto Rican southpaw had 0.4 WAR in six-plus seasons with Manhattan, who paid him $21 million for the honor.

Mickey McDermott ($7.37M per WAR)
This poor guy. As if earning the nickname “The Wrong Mickey” and being widely panned as the first “bad” draft pick 46 seasons ago were not enough, here is McDermott again at the top of the list of deadbeats. McDermott earned that nickname after being selected by the Louisville Colonels fifth overall in the Inaugural Draft, four picks ahead of Mickey Mantle, who was already on his way to the podium before he was called off. McDermott was drafted ahead of Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Warren Spahn.

McDermott struggled in his first year (9-16, 6.35)—and every year thereafter. His 16-year career produced a 52-118 record, 5.64 ERA, and a measly 7.6 WAR. Of 292 UL pitchers with at least 1000 innings pitched, the Wrong Mickey ranks 266 in career WAR, but 37th in career earnings. If we had to pick the single deadweight-iest season of this most deadweighty of UL players, it would have to be 1954, the fourth of his six $7.5 million years as Louisville’s franchise player. In that year, Mickey appeared in a single game, allowed 8 hits and 6 runs in 3.1 innings, left the game with an injury and never returned, finishing the year 0-1 with a 16.20 ERA for a (generous) WAR of 0.0. Poor Mickey.