As I ponder the fate of the Phils, an incredibly streaky team with constantly reversing fates, with the win yesterday on Jimmy Rollins' three-run home run, it occurs to me that J-Roll is this team—he epitomizes it.

He's streaky with flashes of brilliance offensively and defensively but has lapses when he can't master even routine plays—remind you of any team that you know? He strikes out way too much. He has never really settled into his leadoff role, always talking about an on-base percentage but reveling in his delusions of being a slugger. His hot April—9 homers to lead the league at one point, .297 average, and .978 OPS—of course led to his abysmal May—.250, no homers, .279 on-base percentage, and .679 OPS.

The end result is Rollins is a better than average shortstop, and what are the Phils this decade but a consistently slightly above average team with flashes of brilliance mixes with stretches in which they cannot make simple plays, they strike out too much, they don't know what their team makeup is, whether they are fish or fowl. Their opening day starter two weeks later is their closer. They change their third baseman daily. They bat their MVP third to get him more at-bats while setting him up for his—yet far—Kafkaesque season. They take a Mulligan on the bullpen even though they are committed to pulling their starters after one hundred pitches. And their GM might be leading a group that is trying to buy the Mariners even though he denies it.

But, hey, they are over .500 at least for one day.

Anyway, in other shortstop news, former Rookie of the Year, Angel Berroa, was let go by the Royals yesterday four years after winning the award. My first thought was if Berroa's career were truly over—and when you are released by probably the worst organization in baseball, it probably is—would he be the worst former Rookie of the Year ever.

Then I remember Joe Charboneau. And Butch Metzger.

So who is the worst player to win a Rookie of the Year? Who was worst if you ignore his award-winning year? To quote Mr. Owl, let's find out.

I ran the numbers for all former RoY winners, here are the worst on career Win Shares prorated by the number of years the player played. Berroa comes in at just #14:

Maybe Berroa is helped out too much by his award-winning year—Charboneau sure was. Let's run the numbers again without the Rookie of the Year season:

Berroa comes in just tenth here. I was pleased to see Charboneau and Metzger at the top, however. But Berroa can't shake a stick at the abysmal Jerome Walton and former Royal Bob Hamelin.

For fun, here are the best former RoY winners. First, by their career Win Shares per year:

Then they are ranked by the career stats ignoring their RoY season:

Pujols is still outclassing Mays but that might change as he ages. Still that tells you how historically good he's been.