Zoilo Versalles, 1967 Minnesota Twins

Poor Johnny Mize. First he's compared to Miguel Dilone and now Zoilo Versalles, a man who did what Mize never could - win a Most Valuable Player Award (the result of an embarrassing 1965 vote that saw Versalles perservere over his more worthy teammate Tony Oliva). The mighty are known to fall from grace, though. Versalles saw his career quickly disintegrate after winning the the MVP. While he turned in a merely-bad 1966, Zoilo completely fell apart in '67, while the cache of his recent MVP kept him in the lineup full time. As a result, Versalles became the only player to ever score 60 or more runs with an on-base percentage of under .250. The fact Versalles could accumulate 63 runs (if only incidentally) with a slash line of .200/.249/,282 was more a testament to Mangers Sam Mele and Cal Ermer's willingness to give him 626 plate appearances than anything else. Mercifully, Versalles was traded to the Dodgers the next year, and bounced around between the Padres, Indians, Senators, and Braves before retiring after the 1971 season.

Record:
60+ runs, .250- on-base percentage

Wally Gerber, 1926 St. Louis Browns

Wally Gerber's success in Major League baseball is a mystery to me. In 1923, Gerber came fourth in AL MVP voting after having racked up 1 home run, 62 ribbies, and a .281/.342/.339 slash line. For some reason, that put him just behind Babe Ruth, Eddie Collins, and Harry Heilmann in voting, and ahead of Cleveland's Joe Sewell (109 RBI, .935 OPS) and teammate Ken Williams (29 HR, 1.062 OPS), who finished 15th. Three years after his first flirtation with the MVP, Gerber came 23rd in MVP voting in what many sensible people would call a truly awful season. It may be that I'm missing something in retrospect, but usually I don't think of a shortstop from a 62-92 team, who has 8 double, 37 runs scored, and 0 stolen bases as MVP material. The icing on the cake was that Gerber became the only player in history to collect 110+ hits (111) and fewer than 120 total bases (119). How hard is that? Well, it required Gerber to get all of 8 extra-base hits in 473 plate appearances. In what may be history's least amazing twist of fate, perennial MVP candidate Gerber was out of baseball by 1930.

Record:
110+ hits, 120- total bases